
Copyrights 



COKTRlGiff DSFOSfT. 



TEACHER RECRUITING SERIES 

PERSONALITYCULTURE 

by 

COLLEGE FACULTIES 



by DAVID E. BERG 

After visiting seventy-two university teachers 

of all ranks at work with summer 

school classes in twenty-five 

subjects 



INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE 
NEW YORK CITY 



• 134 



Educational Studies and Reports 

by 

Institute foe Public Service Include 



Self-surveying and teacher recruiting 

Who's Who and Why in After War Education 
Rainbow Promises of Progress in Education 
Teacher Benefits from School Surveys 
Self Surveys by Teacher Training Schools 
Surveys by Teacher Training Schools 
Record Aids in College Management 
Pick Your Prof or Getting By in College 
Personalityculture by College Faculties 

War civics 

Liberty the Giant Killer 

Stories of Americans in the World War 

War Fact Tests 

Civic Lessons from War Facts 

Unconditional Surrender Civics 

Teachable Facts about Bolshevism and Sovietism 

Universal Training for American citizenship 

Field studies 

High Spots in New York Schools 
Budget studies for Virginia 
Reorganization studies for Ohio 
Reconstruction studies for Michigan 

Latin America 

How Latin America Affects our Daily Life 
How We Affect Latin America's Dally Life 

Teacher recruiting bulletins 

The Rewards of Teaching 

Teachers Salaries a National Peril 

Why Not Teach? 

Why I Like Teaching 

Career Boundaries for American Girls 

Boys, After High School What? 

Teacherless Schools and Holiday Thoughts 

University Presidents on Teacher Recruiting 

Cartoonist Ireland on Cartooning Teachers 

Colossal Growth of Higher Education 



Copyright, 192J0 by Institute for 
Public Service, New York City 



©CI.A608110 



DEC 20 1920 



INTRODUCTION 

"Personalityculture by College Faculties" is based up- 
on observations of seventy-two university instructors at 
work in over one hundred summer school classes. It is a 
plea for nation-wide insistence upon the highest types of 
personality for college instructors. 

Its personality portraits are by a former university stu- 
dent, himself but a few years out of college, who frankly 
tried to see these seventy-two instructors as their own 
students were seeing them, rather than as extensive and 
intensive explorations of their possibilities by college 
authorities might reveal them. 

This book is issued by the Institute for Public Service 
as part of its efforts to help America see the utmost im- 
portance of recruiting her ablest and noblest personal- 
ities into the teaching profession. 

Nothing short of the strongest personalities in our uni- 
versities, technical schools and colleges — not even 
double or quadruple salaries — will give to teaching the 
reputation necessary to attract able young men and women 
into this greatest of all public services. 

The "personalities plus" here described prove that it 
is not necessary to select "low level personalities" for 
American colleges and training schools, and support the 
author's plea for conscious and systematic personality- 
culture by American colleges and universities. 

This question of teacher personality in our colleges is 
by no means a mere academic question. On the contrary, 
it is one of the most urgently practical questions before 
higher education. In fact, unless more attention is given 



to personalityculture by faculties, it is doubtful if our col- 
leges, universities and professional schools can add teachers 
of the right kind, or even teachers of any kind, fast enough 
to take care of the enormous increases in student register 
which are on the horizon. 

Between 1914 and 1920 the register in 210 colleges 
and universities which answered an inquiry by the Institute 
for Public Service with comparable figures, grew from 
187,000 in 1914, the school year before the war, to 
294,000 in 1919-1920, the first full school year after the 
war. If these 210 colleges continue the same number 
increases each year they will have 471,000 in 1930 and 
83 1 ,000 in 1 950. If they keep on growing at the average 
percentage rate of the last six years, they will have 659, 
000 in 1930 and 1,138,000 in 1950! 

None of the proposals for taking care of larger numbers 
of students without proportionately increasing educational 
plants — such as the extension of night schools, afternoon 
and Saturday classes and university extension work by 
classes, institutes and correspondence — removes or de- 
creases the urgent need for personalityculture. On the 
contrary, every extension which higher education makes 
in its sphere of influence intensifies the demand for person- 
ality among teachers which will inspire ambition and 
build character. 

The same forces that are bringing additional armies 
of young people into colleges are also calling not only 
for more teachers, but for more teachers in proportion to 
students and more teaching ability and personality in each 
teacher. 

INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

The colleges and universities of the United States 
came through the war with flying colors. Their profes- 
sors and graduates aided in the field as technical men, 
chemists, physicists, engineers, psychologists, educators 
and drillmasters, while at home colleagues gave courses 
in special and general branches of the service and re- 
cruited patriotism. 

The war demonstrated to the government and to the 
colleges as well the necessity for commanding, daring 
and creative personalities in attaining victory. And now 
it is equally essential that we obtain great leaders, and 
vigorous and alert personalities, to: fill the chairs of learn- 
ing in the colleges and for training future generations to 
win the battles of peace. 

Heretofore in spite of the fact that our college facul- 
ties have over a quarter of a billion classroom contacts a 
year with students, our colleges have under-estimated, 
so they themselves say, the importance of personality 
to the success of their faculty members. Not only that, 
but the personality of higher education's teachers has 
never been adequately studied. Very little literature 
on the subject exists. The only study which the author 
has been able to find has not been printed, and whatever 
else has been written of it consists chiefly of passing 
remarks in college presidents' reports and in pedagogical 
texts, mainly deploring the lack of any real knowledge 
on the subject. 

The writer records here the results of classroom visits 
to seventy-two instructors, who during the summer sea- 
son of a large university were observed in the actual 
process of teaching. These reports describe briefly the 
living spirit and personality of the teachers, and the at- 
titude and reactions of the students during the class 
period. 

One hundred classes conducted by seventy-two teach- 
ers of twenty-five different subjects were visited during 



six weeks. Thirty-nine of the men visited were observ- 
ed only when lecturing, thirty-one only when holding rec- 
itation, while two were visited more than once who used 
both methods. 

When steps in the teaching process, method or tech- 
nique are mentioned, it will be only to illustrate what 
happened to a class as the result of the teacher person- 
ality. While high grade personalities were frequently 
found using low grade technique, no defective personal- 
ity was observed that could not easily have been 
strengthened by improvements in technique. 

When visiting the classes, all of which were held in 
the morning, the gist of the recitation and lectures was 
taken down and notes made of the appearance, manner- 
isms, dress, method of teaching and personal qualities 
of the professors, together with the number of students 
in the class and main facts about ventilation, lighting, 
seating arrangements and other relevant classroom de- 
tails. Then each afternoon these notes were written out 
as a detailed analysis of the teaching personality observed 
in the morning. As shown on page 111 the seventy- 
two personalities fell into ten type groups. 

The point of view is frankly that of a student. For 
this no apology is made because it is students, not trust- 
ees or presidents or benefactors who' are permanently 
helped or harmed by faculty personality. 

This report is intended for teachers, students and 
alumni of colleges and universities and for all other per- 
sons interested in securing the highest standards of 
personality in America's teaching force, particularly in 
higher education. Teacher personality can be selected 
as easily as seed corn and can be consciously improved 
as easily as can student personality. 

DAVID E. BERG 

Philadelphia 
Nov. 15, 1920 



CONTENTS 

Introduction 3 

Preface 5 

I College Classroom Contacts 9 

II Personality Close-ups — 

First Two Days 1 1 

III Low Levels of Teacher Personality 27 

IV Personalities Plus 49 
V Personality and Teacher Training 69 

VI Teacher Personality Classified 81 

VII Candle Power of Teacher 

Personality 89 

VIII B T U's of Teacher Personality 97 

IX Kilowatts of Teacher Personality 1 03 

X Ten Grades of Teaching Ability 1 09 
XI Next Steps in Personalityculture 119 



Analyzing Personality 

Pratt Institute requires from each 
instructor for each student a per- 
sonality impression with a list of 
weak points, strong points, and 
needs. 

Miami University's president keeps 
a character and personality record 
of each student. 

Capacity analysis is an art at Car- 
negie Institute of Technology and 
Cincinnati's engineering college. 

Minnesota notes each instructor's 
special aptitudes, kinds of student 
attracted, reputation for teaching 
with faculty and students, and 
whether a high or low marker. 

Personalityculture will everywhere 
follow personality analysis. 



CHAPTER I 



CLASSROOM CONTACTS— 250 MILLION A YEAR 

America's 400,000 college students spend from 15 to 
30 hours per week for 36 weeks in classroom or labora- 
tory. This means 250 million contacts with instructors 
in a regular college year, and over one billion during the 
four years constituting a college generation. Classroom 
contact thus assumes an enormous significance. 

Of the various activities which occupy the time of the 
college student, such as attending classes, reading, 
sleeping and eating, attending social and athletic affairs, 
it is only that of the first, attending classes, lectures, 
recitations and laboratory, which means a subjection to 
a definitely planned set of influences. Out of the 135 
waking hours each week of possible supervision, after 
deducting 9 hours of sleep per day, only about 11% to 
22% of the time is actually spent under the immediate 
personal supervision of faculty members. For 16 weeks 
of vacation the student is almost wholly free from all 
college influence, so that of the whole calendar year's 
time, only from 8% to 16% is spent under direct class- 
room influence. Yet this alone amounts to a quarter 
billion sessions of one to two hours where learner and 
teacher meet, the one to grow and the other to help. 

This daily contact of professor and student is higher 
education's opportunity to exhibit personality to its 
400,000 students. Obviously it behooves college facul- 
ties to make these contacts as significant and impressive 
as possible. Obviously, too, professors should be men 
and women of inspiring personality, who are also mas- 
ters of the art of teaching. To determine how effective 



10 » PERSONALITYCULTURE 

were the classroom exercises of seventy-two university 
instructors, chosen from the catalogue without previous 
contact with them, is the main concern of this study. 

Only those particular traits of personality are portrayed 
which are directly related to the teaching power of the 
instructors. To help the reader approach these person- 
ality pictures as the writer approached them after being 
out of college but a few years, the personality portraits 
are first given of those teachers who were visited during 
the first two days of the summer school session when by 
common consent teacher personality should be at its best. 

For Questions or Notes by Readers 



CHAPTER II 

PERSONALITY CLOSE-UPS— FIRST TWO DAYS 

It was a bright, cool summer morning, this first day 
of the summer session. From the eminence upon which 
the university was situated, one obtained a panoramic 
view of beautiful scenery, which with the keen, eager 
air was exhilarating to both mind and body. One stepped 
into the classroom prepared for a swift and daring in- 
tellectual chase. 

Teacher Personality No. 1 — Type 9 

A gray-bearded man, with furtive eyes like those of a 
startled squirrel, was giving a course in grammar. His 
body and his face were small and thin, his eyes and 
voice were dull. 

He stuttered somewhat, but it was a stuttering not of 
the vocal organs, but of the brain itself. To cover the 
holes and rents in the texture of his ideas, he used great 
long "uhs," at the rate of twelve to sixteen per minute. 
He rarely started a sentence correctly, he usually went 
back to start it over, repeated the first phrase two or 
three times, then tottered off. The progress of his ideas 
was like that of an old man trying to scale a steep ascent ; 
a step, a pause, a step, a slip; halting, feeble, painfully 
slow. The auditor's first flush of expectant exhilaration 
changed swiftly to a sense of oppressive tedium. 

Although he had probably given this course of gram- 
mar fifty times, he was dependent upon his notes for the 
definitions he wished his students to learn. His lecture 
proved to be a carnival of definitions, for he defined phon- 



12 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

etics, phonology, grammar, art, science, descriptive, his- 
torical and comnarative grammar and many other every 
day terms. TliJy vvere definitions which most of his 
hearers could have given off hand, and need not have 
read, as he did, from a manuscript, for his class consisted 
of twenty-seven students, most of whom had taught. 
Nine of them were middle-aged. To all, this flood of de- 
finitions must have been very tedious. Had he tried to 
picture their needs, he would have used a different method. 

He had no charm, no sweetness, no wit, no enthusiasm, 
and no originality. His diction was commonplace, al- 
though he was a teacher of English, and his ideas were 
platitudes. He lacked force and animation. His whole 
personality was as colorless as ashes. He seemed strick- 
en with a chronic catalepsis, which had frozen his emo- 
tions and feelings and had stiffened all suppleness of 
thought. 

Not once during the hour did he call on anyone for 
suggestions or information about experiences and prob- 
lems, try to enlist the cooperation of the class, or attempt 
to determine what was going on in the students' minds. 
Nothing occurred that gave promise of life, of fresh 
knowledge, of inspiration ; everything said and done 
boded a six weeks trip across an intellectual Sahara. 
The bell rang and the sepulchral charm was broken. 
The students grabbed hats and books, and started for 
the door. 

"Take the first nineteen pages of Sweet", called the 
teacher, straining his thin voice almost to the cracking 
point. The class, unheeding, poured out into the hall. 

Teacher Personality No. 2 — Type 6 

The next was a class in the "Nature and Function of 
Play." The title, at least, gave promise of something 
interesting and enlivening. A tall, angular man stalked 
awkwardly into the room and sunk his body behind the 
desk. He must have been mostly legs, for he almost 
disappeared from sight after he had seated himself. Sud- 



PERSONALITY CLOSE-UPS 13 

denly his tall, lanky form shot into the air, and he set 
about distributing mimeographed lists of texts and read- 
ing assignments. Then he again cleverly concealed the 
major portion of his anatomy behind the bulwark of his 
desk, where he remained impregnably entrenched during 
the whole hour. 

He started to speak in a hard, rattling voice that was 
much too loud for the size of the room and echoed and 
re-echoed with a confusing din. He spoke of the atten- 
tion devoted to play in biology, in folklore, in education, 
in works on the theory of evolution, in social reform, in 
institutions, in churches, and gave examples of activities 
that placed emphasis on play and recreation. He waxed 
eloquent on this theme, but the class did not melt into a 
common sea of enthusiasm. They remained cold and 
inert. Had he felt the importance of mutual sympathy 
between teacher and student, he could hardly have con- 
tinued his lecture without opening the channels of sym- 
pathy and comprehension. 

The teacher's enthusiasm was based on many years of 
experience with the subject. He made sweeping state- 
ments, one after the other, which were too strange, too 
radical for immediate assimilation by the students. Most 
of them had not heard of play in this sense before, 
consequently they had no body of knowledge, had no in- 
ternal fuel to be ignited by the flame of his enthusiasm. 
The class, after its first start of interest, was unable to 
gather headway as fast as the teacher, was left far be- 
hind in the race, and lapsed into inanition. 

His manner was artificial and over-strained. His eyes 
had a forced brightness and alertness ; he flashed them 
from one part of the room to the other, but they appeared 
to see nothing. There was a false emphasis in his voice 
and an exaggerated leaning forward over his desk. His 
attempts at humor fell flat. The impression he gave was 
this : here was a man without the essential quality of 
personality, mechanically overdoing the motions of pos- 
sessing one, and trying to "put across" something he 
did not possess. He was like a man who swims at the 
rate of one-half mile an hour trying to breast a five mile 



14 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

current. He made no headway, but was carried down 
stream. No one in the class seemed impressed. The bell 
rang. He then started to call the roll which consumed 
five minutes of the students' time. 



Teacher Personality No. 3 — Type 4 

The next man visited was giving a lecture course in 
the "History of the Renaissance". He had a considerable 
command of his subject matter, possessed great ease of 
manner and a nonchalance, that, if not an affectation, was 
in strange contrast to his burly figure and voice. He 
appeared conscious of his power, his force, his success 
and popularity with students. He was conscious of it; 
too conscious of it, as a matter of fact. 

He began a sentence with a spurt, and at the begin- 
ning his speech was rapid, forceful and distinct. Towards 
the end of the sentence, his thick, heavy voice dwindled 
down to a decided drawl. His voice came in fits and 
starts, like sounds to one in a fever. At first, the drawl 
struck one as being accidental and involuntary, but later 
one wondered if his sporadic drawl like the flabby pos- 
ture of his body, his arm hanging limply over the back 
of his chair, his sprawling limbs, and his chin drawn tight 
to his neck, were part and parcel of his whole histrionic 
makeup and attitudinizing. 

He was likable, but not inspiring. He did not illumin- 
ate the halls of the mind, nor did he spur his students to 
increased action and enthusiastic effort. Withal, how- 
ever, he was entertaining. His lecture was studded with 
gems of wit like these : 

"We are going to evaluate," he said, preening 

himself like a peacock, "evaluate, isn't that a 

lovely word?" 

"Dates in history always attract students; 

they are like honey to a bee." 

"Leave out the details in taking notes. Take 

down the generalizations; unrelated details are 

a weariness to the flesh." 



PERSONALITY CLOSE-UPS 15 

"He was a most omnivorous reader, but his 
head was like a sieve, nothing remained." 
"Taking notes checks your natural impetuosity 
in reading." > 
As he continued talking, his self-conscious vanity, his 
indolence and cocksureness provoked a feeling almost of 
contempt. To one who had expected a keen, straining 
spirit, it was a disappointment to find an intellectual 
voluptuary, dallying with the pretty phrases of the con- 
firmed wit. He evinced a disdain for mental exertion ; 
the deeper powers of his mind sprawled out in much the 
same fashion as his limbs. 

Here was a course rich in material treating of inspir- 
ing men and ideas, with the brightest of possibilities to 
illumine and exalt the youthful mind. But the first thing 
the teacher did was to draw a sooty finger across the 
glorious picture which each student in his imagination 
had painted of the age of Renaissance. His preliminary 
remarks, flippant and sarcastic, cheapened the student's 
conceptions of that golden age, so productive of spirit- 
ual wealth to humanity, and degraded the spirit of his 
whole course. As he lectured in his studied tone of bore- 
dom about the great Dante, one noted involuntarily, 
with a distinct sense of pain, the difference between the 
soaring spirit of the poet and the affectation, the disdain, 
and the vanity of the teacher. 

Here were no incisive, startling flashes of remote re- 
semblances, no profound principles, no originality of 
ideas; just a fatuous indulgence in platitudes and the 
obvious, the pitter-patter of the drawing-room wit. He 
was a man of unusual ability and attainments, who had 
made his mark, but who was resting on his oars content 
to drift with the current of his reputation as an enter- 
tainer and stimulator. 

That he interested and attracted the students could 
not be denied. But was his attitude of nonchalance and 
cynicism one that should be imitated by the students? 
College students are all too ready to assume this air and 
attitude of superiority. Would not imitation levy tot> 
heavy a toll on society, or if this teacher's value consisted 



16 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

in warning- the students of the undesirable, is not this 
dangerous procedure? 

Teacher Personality No. 4— Type 1 

The last class visited the first day was that of a mathe- 
matics teacher, later learned to be well-liked and admired 
by his students. Exactly as the gong sounded, he strode 
into the room. In a few seconds he had called the roll. 
While doing so, his sharp eyes singled out the student 
who answered. He appeared to connect name with per- 
son instantly. One felt intuitively that his mind re- 
tained the impression permanently. His first words were 
electrical in their effect. They were common enough 
intrinsically, but they revealed the acumen and energy 
of a powerful personality. Every move he made, every 
statement he uttered, expressed energy, resolution and 
keenness. In five minutes, every student must have 
felt that he was every inch a man and in addition a 
mathematician with a profound and ready command of 
his subject. 

He talked without notes. As he walked from one part 
of the room to the other, each head in the room turned 
in his direction, and his eyes, as they swept from student 
to student appeared to fix in turn each pair of eyes in 
the room. In a few minutes, he had given a bird's-eye 
view of the whole field of mathematics, and showed how 
algebra was related to the other branches of mathematics 
and to the practical sciences. He told the Hindoo and 
Chinese conceptions of mathematics and the relation of 
algebra to the Greeks' geometry. He emphasized the 
necessity of mastering the elementary processes in al- 
gebra : to actually perform the operations, for their mas- 
tery is as essential to the student's grasp of advanced 
algebra as the violinist's mastery of technique of his in- 
strument is to his ability to interpret great music. Imme- 
diately in the students' minds, the simple, routine opera- 
tions of algebra were invested with a significance never 
before suspected. 

One gained the impression that he was firm and exact- 



PERSONALITY CLOSE-UPS 17 

ing, that he demanded precision and diligence, and a 
high standard of acquisition. At the same time, he ap- 
peared kindly and sympathetically penetrating in his 
judgment of human nature. He went to the blackboard 
to illustrate his remarks and called on various students 
individually and on the class as a whole to direct the 
work. In a short while he had enlisted the hearty co- 
operation of the class, had the class thinking as one mind, 
alert and eager to anticipate the next step and next oper- 
ation. The thirty individual members were fused into 
an organic working unit. 

The whole impression was that of a keen, invigorating 
mind, so swift and incisive that it almost deprived one 
of breath. The man seemed the embodiment of a swift 
moving force that spurred his students to great effort. 
His wit was incisive and searching, a wit that scintillated 
and illuminated. Here were charm, humor, kindliness, 
resourcefulness, penetration, energy and other qualities 
that make for a dynamic personality and a brilliant 
teacher. 

This last class exercise was an excellent demonstration 
of the results which a skillful teacher can accomplish 
within the space of an hour. The teacher because of 
his discriminating and comprehensive command of the 
subject had, in this period of time, made a definite con- 
tribution to the student's supply of knowledge. From 
the very beginning his great enthusiasm and forcefulness 
had aroused the interest of the students in the subject. 
He wasted no time in putting them to work, and his de- 
cisiveness, resolution and exactingness made them real- 
ize that much hard and conscientious work was in store 
for them, which was to be productive of definite results. 
Moreover, it had been a great pleasure, a mental and 
physical exhilaration, to sit in his class. 

Compare this last with the first three teachers: the 
first man was unbearably stupid and tedious ; the second 
was a loud-voiced ranter who distressed one's ears and 
sense of truth ; the third was an indolent egotist, amusing, 
but provocative of resentment and contempt. From 
the first man the students could gain only un- 



18 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

serviceable and deadening- facts and methods. The second 
and third were men of ability, but their effectiveness was 
greatly handicapped by remediable faults of personality. 

Teacher Personality No. 5 — Type 3 

The first class visited on the second day was one in 
philosophy, called ''Man and Nature". Seventy one stu- 
dents were present; about an equal number of men and 
women. 

A short, dark man passed rapidly up the aisle from 
the back of the room. The laughter and chattering of the 
class subsided instantly. Every face turned to the desk 
with that expectancy which characterizes the rise of a 
curtain on an absorbing play. 

"I shall speak today of the arguments for evolution," 
he began. His voice was somewhat thick, choked and 
roughened, and his enunciation was marred by a kind of 
lisp. His forehead was rounded and massive. 

"There are four arguments for evolution ; first, argu- 
ments from embryology ; second, those from morphology ; 
third, those from geographical distribution; and last, 
the arguments from paleontology." 

He spoke slowly and deliberately. Contrary to one's 
anticipations from his appearance and voice, every word 
could be heard distinctly. In two sentences he had out- 
lined the plan of his lecture for the hour and every one 
knew what part to expect. It would be easy to follow 
the whole lecture, whether one took notes or not. 

"The criticism made against these arguments is that 
they rest on merely circumstantial evidence," he con- 
tinued. "But all kinds of proof dealing with matter or 
with facts are based on circumstantial evidence, and 
evolution is the simplest conclusion from all the great 
mass of evidence that exists." 

He then gave the arguments for evolution from em- 
bryology, and spoke of the presence of rudimentary or- 
gans in man. "The evolutionist asks why all these pe- 
culiar and unnecessary organs and tissues develop and 



PERSONALITY CLOSE-UPS 19 

disappear in the embryo if they are not vestiges and 
signs of previous stages in the history of the race. The 
creationist answers that God is all-wise and that his 
motives are inscrutable. Now, I don't ask you to decide 
one way or the other; I shall not impose my beliefs on 
you. I shall merely present you the facts ; you may 
draw your own conclusions." 

Despite the blandness of his words, there was a note 
of raillery in the tone of this voice that bit sharply and 
deeply. It implied that if you did not believe in evol- 
ution after he had stated the arguments for it no one 
could have much respect for your intelligence. 

His lecture proceeded in a clean-cut methodical man- 
ner. He possessed a ready command of his subject; he 
drove his principles home with great force and selected 
examples and illustrations that were interesting and val- 
uable in themselves. His mind was supple, prolific and 
logical. He also showed considerable skill as a draughts- 
man. Before the class hour he had made some admirable 
chalk drawings on the blackboard, illustrating the re- 
semblance of the forelimbs of various animals, — fish, 
bird, seal, and whale — to those of man. The whole lec- 
ture was pointed, suggestive and extremely interesting. 
It must have made a profound impression on minds hear- 
ing its information for the first time. 

The teacher was alert, ingenious and possessed great 
charm of manner, and a ready, sympathetic wit. The 
class was keyed to a high degree of interest, for during the 
lecture every student strained forward in his seat, to 
catch the next phrase. A close bond of sympathy and 
understanding had already by the second day sprung up 
between the class and the teacher. But again and again 
appeared this fine vein of biting irony, when comparing 
explanations of the various arguments offered by the evo- 
lutionist with those advanced by the creationist. Appar- 
ently the teacher realized the tremendous disturbances 
that his message would set up in many listeners' minds, 
and slipped into this ironic mood possibly to leaven and 
circumvent their seriousness. This sharp, delicate note 
of raillery marred somewhat the impression of his lecture, 



20 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

for it denoted a certain lack of that sustained and elevated 
attitude which the seriousness of the subject demanded. 
Moreover, his diction also' lacked elevation, so that the 
effect was not clean-cut and gripping as it might easily 
have been. On the whole, however, his was a personality 
of exceptional power. 



Teacher Personality No. 6 — Type 4 

The sixth class consisted of eighty-five students. It 
was a course termed "The High School Recitation", in- 
tended for high school teachers or prospective high school 
teachers. 

The gong sounded and a man projected himself into 
the room at an amazing speed and started talking with an 
incredible rapidity. The suddenness of this assault of 
sound upon the ears was momentarily confusing. 

"To keep a record of your attendance, I shall ask you 
to write your names on slips of paper and hand them to 
my assistant at the door as you pass out at the end of 
the hour. If you have any questions you want me to 
answer, write them on the same slip." These statements 
came out in one continuous roll. 

"I will read and answer the first question. 'Don't you 
think that one can get as much enjoyment out of studying 
a book as merely reading it?' Yes, there can be an en- 
joyment of saying the multiplication table rapidly, or 
translating a difficult passage of Latin." 

"Second question : 'Parker says that an old person can 
learn a foreign language more rapidly than a young per- 
son. Is this true?' Parker is on delicate ground. No 
one has proved this. Parker wants to insist that old 
people can also learn languages. You at your age can 
learn better because you have more control over your 
attention. The argument for learning a foreign language 
in youth is a matter of emphasis." 

Then followed a series of discursive remarks on the 
teaching of Latin in high school, on the value of language 
as affording intellectual training and on politics in schools* 



PERSONALITY CLOSE-UPS 21 

"We don't know anything about it; no exact experiments 
are available to test the higher processes of the mind," 
was his parting shot to the second question ! 

He read question after question, answering them as he 
read them. "Is Latin more valuable than manual train- 
ing?" "What is the use of drawing and music?" "When 
is the time to 1 help a child who is experimenting?" "At 
the point of discouragement or at the point of confusion," 
answered the talker in answer to this last question. 

Then he branched off into a discussion of the evils of 
repetition, the folly of trying to pump something out of 
empty heads, and of teachers then dropping into the level 
of scolding. A teacher should be able to detect which 
pupil will be able to contribute something of value to 
the recitation. Otherwise he makes a living sacrifice of 
the best pupils. 

Then he told the story of a teacher scolding a boy 
who apparently knew nothing. "At your age Abraham 
Lincoln was earning his living," said the teacher. "At 
your age Abe Lincoln was president of the United 
States," retorted the boy. "Teachers demand too much 
verbal reproduction. We should stretch our judgments 
over a larger span. We are too much interested in a 
continual garrulous self-analysis," and so on for forty- 
five minutes. 

Five minutes before the hour was over, he had run 
through the questions and had started his lecture proper, 
"How do we get our educational ideals?" 

Nothing but a stenographic report could do justice to 
this performance. His talk was an inextricable jungle of 
words and phrases, of half formulated and blind alley 
theories. Ideas followed each other by the merest acci- 
dent of association, and not because they had any logical 
bearing on the subject under discussion. Sentences were 
broken off like faults in a geological formation and entire- 
ly unrelated ideas placed in juxtaposition. Ideas were 
poured forth like the eruption of a volcano, the good with 
the bad, prejudices and personal opinion grating on ac- 
cepted, rationalized principles. His talk possessed neither 
lucidity nor coherence. 



22 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

He talked like a mad hurricane in great rolling periods 
which ended only when his breath gave out. His voice 
was hard and raucous, a domineering, egotistical voice. 
He possessed the characteristic squint of conceit, that 
inward turned glance of a man who hears others' ideas 
only as confused reverberations of his own. His nature 
bore the ineffaceable stamp of the spectacular and the 
exaggerated. His highly-charged mind, his torrent of 
words and distorted ideas, his gusts of emotion and over- 
towering egotism produced an effect both fascinating and 
repelling. The class listened stunned and spellbound. 



Teacher Personality No. 7 — Type 10 

"Public School Music" was the name of the seventh 
class. Twenty-two women and two forlorn looking men 
comprised the class. The course was intended to train 
teachers of public school music. The teacher turned out 
to be a tall young woman, who dragged herself slowly 
across the room and collapsed wearily into her chair. 
Her voice, expression and movements were listless. 

"I want to give a few criticisms of your practice teaching 
last time," she drawled. 'T shall speak of them as I 
think of them." These consisted of a few straggling re- 
marks, rank vagrants drummed up from remote corners 
of her brain, ludicrously shallow and trite. Two women 
of considerable maturity took issue with some of her 
wilder criticisms, and after a lively encounter, forced the 
teacher to retract some and modify others of these criti- 
cisms. 

Her thoughts had apparently been doomed to the 
same fate as the Wandering Jew. She talked as though 
her consciousness and tongue had long parted company. 
Occasionally her gaze would grow abstracted, and her 
face would contract into a puzzled frown for no apparent 
reason. Then she would make an effort to collect her 
thoughts, would suddenly straighten herself, sit bolt up- 
right, and direct hef gaze to the class. This performance 



PERSONALITY CLOSE-UPS 23 

dragged on for fifteen minutes with a generous propor- 
tion of repetition. 

After this followed a lamentable attempt to conduct a 
recitation. Apparently she had assigned chapters or sec- 
tions in several texts on psychology, and the recitation 
was to consist of a discussion of them. She called on 
the students to state what the various authors had said, 
not specifying in regard to what particular topic. One 
half of the students were not prepared and those who 
did respond proceeded to read their answers indistinctly 
and almost inaudibly from their notebooks, so that when 
their murmurs had ceased, few knew what had been said. 
The teacher seemed to know even less about what was 
being said than anyone else. 

It gradually developed that the assignments referred 
to certain principles of habit formation. As these hap- 
hazard contributions to the recitation straggled in, no 
attempt was made to sum up or relate them to the main 
topic, no well defined principles were evolved, and no 
efforts were made to indicate the relation of the principles 
of habit formation to the learning or teaching of public 
school music. 

One woman who appeared to know something of the 
subject spoke of a certain statement that William James 
has made. "Oh, I don't know anything about that," said 
the teacher, sharply. "I have just read the two chapters 
I assigned." 

When listening to a student's garbled recitation, she 
would refer constantly to her own notes to check the ac- 
curacy of the student, occasionally reading haltingly from 
them. She had absolutely no sense of the relative value 
of the matter that the students read from their notes. 

She lacked logical power, alertness, and possessed 
merely a superficial acquaintance with a few trite, 
oft-repeated principles. She could not even focus her 
own attention upon the work, much less hold the attention 
of her students. The visitor discovered later that the 
teacher had never taught public school music in her life. 
And she was teaching others how to teach it! 



24 PBRSONALITYCULTURE 

Teacher Personality No. 8 — Type 1 

The last class visited the second day was a huge one 
of over two hundred teacher-students, whose electing a 
course in such numbers guaranteed some kind of strong 
personality in store. The room was full to overflowing; 
several of the men students had perched themselves on 
the window-sills and many of the others were standing. 
It was a class in Social Education. 

A rather short, well-built man entered the room and 
took his place behind the desk, alert and smiling. His 
bearing and movements indicated poise and ease of man- 
ner. He spoke a few words about the electric fans and 
the necessity of ventilating the room. Then he noticed 
the students perched in the window-sills. "Is it really 
and genuinely comfortable up there?" he asked. The 
class broke out into a hearty laugh. 

The speaker began to speak slowly in a smooth, even 
voice that had good carrying power. The day's subject 
was "The Various Aspects of Sociability." He spoke 
of the moral consciousness of our nation, and asked if 
it were declining or advancing. His own views were 
optimistic. 

As the talk continued on freedom of speech, friendship, 
social cooperation, etc., stories and witticisms that grew 
out of the situation would be followed by waves of spon- 
taneous laughter. His alertness and resourcefulness, his 
keen realisation of the effect of carefully chosen words, 
his adaptation to the students' psychology, his good hu- 
mor and spontaneous wit gave him a power that riveted 
the attention of the whole class. 

One thing that contributed to arousing their interest 
was the unexpectedness of the things he said and did. 
The "what-will-happen-next" attitude was aroused, the 
students stood on the tiptoe of attention to catch his next 
word. Nor did he by any means depend solely upon his 
"jolts" to produce interest. The reason was partly that, 
but it lay deeper. The subject matter itself was pro- 
foundly interesting, he took a novel point of view, his 
attitude was sincere and socially minded, and his com- 



PERSONALITY CLOSE-UPS 25 

ments were penetrating and illuminating. 

Then too, the lecturer had mastered a unique kind of 
technique, a technique that was so highly finished as to 
appear spontaneous. For example, he used the rhetori- 
cal question often with great success. He would pro- 
pound the question, pause a moment until two hundred 
students had formulated answers in their own minds, 
and then snap off the answer. Sometimes he would 
raise a question and ask for an oral vote. There was a 
subtle air of flattery in the manner that the teacher called 
for the votes of the class. It was as though he suspended 
judgment until the class had rendered its verdict. 

Here was a man whose appearances were followed by 
hand-clappings and cheers. For fifty minutes he had 
commanded complete attention from a class of two hun- 
dred. His words were highly charged with suggestive 
power, which set in motion trains of thought and feelings 
greatly disproportionate to the intrinsic value of the 
words. It was as though light, delicately sounded over- 
tones possessed the power of vibrating sympathetically 
the deep fundamental tones. No visitor needed to be 
informed that he had seen a remarkable example of ar- 
tistic teaching by a strong personality, where an easy 
command of the subject was combined with audacity, 
subtlety, wit, charm and purposefulness. 

Summary, first two days' visits 

These first eight personality sketches include examples 
of the zenith and nadir of teaching ability observed. 
Only two other men of the seventy-two visited were on a 
par with the fourth and eighth teachers of mathematics 
and education, although four or five other teachers of 
great ability approximated them. The teachers of gram- 
mar and of public school music, Nos. 1 and 7, were among 
the half dozen least effective teachers observed whose 
teaching was clearly below "passing mark". 

The poor teaching power of Personalities Nos. 2, 3, 6, 
was due largely to faults of personality, — coldness, lack 



26 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

of insight and enthusiasm, affectation, bluff, exaggera- 
tion, etc. — and only in a smaller degree to bad teaching 
methods. To be sure, each of these teachers could im- 
prove his teaching methods to considerable advantage. 

It is a significant fact that the teachers whose person- 
alities seemed the most effective, Nos. 4, 5, 8, also had 
a greater mastery of the proper teaching methods. 

From a reading of merely the above sketches, it be- 
comes apparent that certain traits of personality and 
teaching power are intimately related ; that if a teacher 
exhibits certain undesirable qualities of personality, he 
cannot attain marked success as a teacher. One trait 
in particular seemed to characterize the effective teacher 
and appeared to be lacking in the poor teacher; it was that 
of insight, the knowledge of what was going on in the 
students' minds, after first wanting to see, of appreciating 
their difficulties and points of view. The effective teacher 
adjusted his ideas, diction, and methods to suit the needs 
and backgrounds of his students. Enthusiasm, sympathy, 
charm, wit, exactingness, thoroughness, logicality, sin- 
cerity, vision and vigor were other desirable traits of 
personality observed. 

Does the reader question the desirability, yes, the ur- 
gency, of having teacher personalities observed at work in 
classrooms by college authorities who offer these person- 
alities to students? 



For Questions or Notes by Readers 



CHAPTER III 
LOW LEVELS OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 

Visits to the classes revealed this interesting point, that 
the classroom exercise, whether lecture or recitation, 
brings out in high relief for students as well as visitors the 
characteristic and fundamental qualities of the teacher's 
personality. A person in repose can conceal much, but 
action is a pitiless self-revealer, especially action that is 
bent upon the serious purpose of teaching. 

The act of teaching, the contact of instructor and stu- 
dent, lays bare the great hidden powers of prolific and pro- 
found spirits, or reveals the emptiness and impotence of 
shallow natures. It is a curious fact that in the class- 
room some teachers seem freer, less reserved than in the 
outside world, while others appear to withdraw them- 
selves into a shell of reserve. To the more expansive 
and volatile spirits the students' presence usually acts as 
a stimulus, while to cold, unsympathetic natures, its in- 
fluence is that of a depressant. 

Although the proportion may be the same in both 
cases, oddities, freakishness and exaggerations seemed 
more prevalent in the classroom than in ordinary social 
life. Peculiarities of dress, affectation and faultiness of 
speech and manner, slovenly postures of the body, tardi- 
ness, insincerity, frivolity, tediousness, garrulousness, 
flirting, salaciousness, indolence, cynicism, rampant ego- 
tism, arrogance, superciliousness, iciness and stoniness of 
manner were some of the salient faults which flaunted 
themselves. 

Some of the teachers were of displeasing or distressing 
physical appearance. Several appeared more careless 
of their appearance, manners, and actions during the class 



28 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

period than one would like to imagine them when in the 
privacy of their own homes. 

In some cases one could plainly see that the students 
were greatly handicapped in their work because of the 
more glaring faults of the teacher's personality, and in 
many cases lesser faults must have proved discouraging 
and distracting influences. The following fifteen per- 
sonality portraits will illustrate some of the idiosyn- 
cracies, oddities of manners and appearance and weak- 
nesses and inadequacies of low level personalities among 
instructors. 

Some men of nimble wits and lively imaginations 
allow their minds to run wild, like engines stripped of 
governors. The two instructors next described are ex- 
amples of this. 

Teacher Personality No. 9 — Type 5 

A French class was a miniature Babel. It seemed an 
Americanized version of a Chinese school. The teacher 
possessed a volatile mind whose safety valve showed it- 
self in a continuous running fire of persiflage. While he 
directed a few volleys to students in one part of the room, 
those out of range set up a number of minor vortices of 
chattering. The teacher was tall and stout, unctious in 
manner, fair-haired and of a florid complexion. The 
nimbleness of his tongue was in startling contrast to his 
portly appearance and listless posture. Only the surface 
of his mind was agitated, the deeper currents. — if such 
existed — were as inert as his body. 

"Perfect as I get it!" was his response to nearly every 
student's answer. Sometimes an excited buzz of protest 
arose. The rest of the class had not heard his last ques- 
tion or failed to understand the student's answer above 
the steady hum of their own voices. This sign of attention 
was astonishing. Apparently they chattered with one 
ear open to the teacher's words as the proverbial cat 
sleeps with one eye open. He momentarily withdrew 
his attention from the student who was reciting and 



LOW LEVELS OP TEACHER PERSONALITIES 29 

directed his fusilade towards the rest of the class to clear 
up the difficulty. 

"Get it folks?" came from the teacher, after a few 
words of explanation. Another buzz of protest, then a 
little altercation, a truce and a readjustment, and "Now 
you're fixed, folks?" Again the teacher resumed his run- 
ning fire of individual persiflage. 

His questions were in French. He asked the ladies 
their age, and some said it was six and others eighty. 
He asked them if they liked the movies and wanted to 
be movie-actresses. No, they would rather be charwom- 
en and cooks. He asked the men if they had potatoes in 
their pockets, if they liked to eat snow. No, they had 
nothing but diamonds in their pockets and would rather 
chew snuff. During this chaffing some of the men walk- 
ed from one end of the room to the other to compare 
translations of sentences. One man was trying to stuff 
a book down another's coat collar. 

Here are three remarks by the teacher caught on the 
fly, while the observer had his eyes on the stage busi- 
ness of the lesser stars of the performance. 

"I'll let you do that later." 

"You don't know enough English to answer that." 

"You've got more trouble than spelling." 

It was very amusing. One wondered if this Gaelic light- 
ness, this frothy effervescence was not far preferable to 
the too frequent Anglo-Saxon dough of dullness. Still it 
was too bad that this wildfire mental activity could not 
be directed to more substantial and serious ends. 



Teacher Personality Noi 10 — Type 4 

It was a class of "Musical Appreciation" assembled in 
a large auditorium. The teacher was a tall, heavy set 
man, well past middle age, with a thick mat of iron gray 
hair and a thunderous voice. He began by calling, or 
rather shouting, the roll and spent seven minutes running 
through forty names. It was strange performance. He 
went through it only once a week — as was learned later — 



30 PBRSONALITYCULTURE 

but then he made an event of it. He made droll remarks 
about the more uncommon names, and demanded more 
sonorous responses to his calls. When some of the bolder 
spirits in the class answered so stentoriously that they 
awoke the echoes, he would shout back; "That's some- 
thing like it. I'm glad you're alive." There was no re- 
sponse when he called one girl's name; "We'll put her 
among the goats." The next girl responded to the call. 
"You belong to the sheep," he remarked. 

During the roll call some students entered about five 
minutes late. "Why don't you people come to class on 
time?" he roared. The late arrivals were momentarily 
taken aback. The other students laughed appreciatively. 
The class was in a constant state of titillation during 
the whole of this performance. It was sheer buffoonery 
with an element of drollery, but it none the less expres- 
sed a low level leadership. 

He then commenced to talk about Bach. He wanted to 
play some of Bach's organ compositions, but considered 
the organ in the auditorium too wretched to be endured. 

"I'd like to get rid of this organ !" he said, pointing to 
the instrument. "It is driving me stark mad. Who will 
buy it? It's up for auction. Who'll make the first bid?" 

No one bid. Apparently his depreciating comments 
had prejudiced the members of the class. No one desired 
the organ. All his exhortations did not "get a rise" from 
the class. He assumed an air of desperation. "Nothing 
bid. Going! Going! Gone! Sold to no one for nothing!" 
and he banged his fist on the lecture stand. The class 
was convulsed at the mummery. 

The rest of the class period was spent in much the 
same manner. 

His personality possessed a whimsical eccentricity of 
manner and expression, tinged with considerable high- 
handedness and arrogance. Yet his character appeared 
invertebrate and slovenly. His tomfoolery, nonsensical- 
ly, and horse-play were amusing, but demoralized the 
educational interest of the class. Not ten minutes of 
serious work was done during the whole hour. 



LOW LEVELS OP TEACHER PERSONALITY 31 

Some teachers were lackadaisical and apathetic. They 
neither desired nor were able to do any effective teaching. 
A number of such teachers were visited and their classes 
were the scenes of several startling and unusual incidents. 
Two examples of this type of personality will be des- 
cribed briefly. 



Personality No. 11 — Type 7 

A small class — eleven women and two men — sat wait- 
ing for the instructor to appear. It was a course in 
"Elementary Harmony." Five minutes after the gong 
had sounded, a young lady appeared in the doorway, an- 
nounced that the teacher wanted the class to write their 
exercises in harmonizing on the board, and thereupon 
disappeared. The transcribing of these exercises, con- 
sisting of four measures, occupied eleven minutes. The 
students finished this work, returned to their seats, but 
no teacher appeared on the scene. 

Then some daring spirit suggested that we organize 
an impromptu chorus and sing the exercises which had 
been transcribed on the board. One spirit took command 
of the piano, another seized a baton and assigned parts 
to each of the students. The visitor was asked to sing 
bass, presumably because he sat on the left side of the 
class. 

A few crashing chords, and we were off. It was real 
fun ; it was spontaneous and original and contained the 
spice of danger. The melodies which had been harmoniz- 
ed were sonorous and had the majesty of Gregorian 
chants. The spirit and exhilaration of the thing mounted 
higher and higher. We were carried away by a genuine 
enthusiasm. Suddenly as we were gloriously launched 
on the pinions of a stately melody, the teacher appeared 
in the doorway. The song faltered and dropped like a 
wounded bird in its flight. 

It was twenty-four minutes after the hour. The in- 
structor smiled comprehendingly, but made no comment. 
He was a tall young man and wore a cream colored palm 



32 PBRSONALITYCULTURB 

beach suit, a white tie and white canvas shoes. The 
total effect was pleasing to the eye. His expression was 
nonchalant and indifferent, his manner was distinguish- 
ed, and as he strode across the room he carried himself 
stiffly and haughtily, like a young military officer attend- 
ing a fashionable reception. 

The teacher went to the board, and corrected one after 
another of the exercises written there, making a few com- 
ments as he went along. He finished the correcting in 
twelve minutes — nine out of the thirteen students having 
gone to the bo'ard. During the procedure he merely 
pointed out the mistakes and corrected them, but did not 
try to discover whether or not the various members of 
the class had noted them and could correct them. Then 
he wrote out a melody on the board and proceeded to 
harmonize it. Even in this he did not enlist the coopera- 
tion of the class. He sat down at the piano and played 
it over. 

"Wherever you can use a fifth you can also use a 
seventh," he said after he had finished. For a few mo- 
ments he dawdled with the keys, striking a few chords. 

"Do you know the use of discord in music? Concord 
of sweet sounds is not always a concord. Harmony is 
a matter of interest, you have discord and then a resolu- 
tion." He played a few bars from Tristan and Isolde, 
saying that here discord expressed desire. 

"We are not writing black dots, but music," he re- 
marked in a bored tone, gazing up at the ceiling. The 
class was a necessary evil ; he regarded it as a child that 
must be quieted, it was his task to keep it from fidgeting 
or crying. He succeeded, for he almost put the tiresome 
little creature to sleep. Some of the students stared 
listlessly about, others sat dreaming with half-closed eyes. 
They asked him no questions and he took care to ask 
them none. He wrote on the board, played the piano, 
and made a few desultory remarks. The twenty six min- 
utes which he deigned to spend with the class passed 
peacefully and uneventfully. The delightful spirit that 
had permeated the class during the impromptu concert 
had been smothered by the teacher's indifference and 



LOW LEVELS OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 33 

bored manner. 

The teacher was frequently late and always lacka- 
daisical, was the statement of one of the students, as we 
filed out dejectedly. This teacher's apathy was in strik- 
ing contrast to the turgid, effervescence of the teacher 
previously described, but the results in both cases were 
about equally negligible. 



Teacher Personality No. 12— Type 8 

It was another class in beginning French, which was 
visited during the last week of the summer session. The 
teacher was a saucer-eyed, thick lipped man with gaunt 
cheeks and sandy hair. He did not look like a French- 
man, much less did he talk like one. 

First he sent his class of fourteen students to the 
board, each to translate two short sentences from En- 
glish into French. To each student were assigned dif- 
ferent sentences. During the ten minutes consumed in 
writing these, nothing was said. The next twenty-five 
minutes were devoted to correcting these sentences. The 
number and variety of the mistakes that the students 
succeeded in making in these simple exercises constituted 
a marvel of misdirected ingenuity that taxed shrewdly 
the teacher's ability to correct them. One might have 
expected a storm of denunciation and ridicule from the 
teacher, for the futility of the work was truly disgraceful. 
But it appeared to occasion no surprise. He plodded a- 
long amiably and futilely, droning out his criticisms with 
an apathetic patience mixed with a somnolent keenness. 

The remaining fifteen minutes were devoted to oral 
work, wherein it developed that the students did not 
understand what the instructor was saying, that the lat- 
ter's pronunciation of French was execrable, and that the 
students' ability to answer in French was almost zero. 
The oral work consisted of a series of questions in French 
repeated a half dozen times, often with an English trans- 
lation of them and interspersed with monosyllabic re- 
plies from the students. The replies consisted mainly of 



34 ' PERSONALITYCULTURE 

variations of "non", "oui", "comment", and "je ne sais 
pas". The students had learned practically nothing dur- 
ing the five and a half weeks. 

Towards the end of the hour a huge wasp, which had 
remained perfectly silent until this time, broke out into 
a terrible buzzing, apparently unable to restrain any 
longer its indignation at this parody on teaching. Most 
of the girls started as if stung, craned their necks, and 
glanced wildly about the room to locate the source of 
these ominous noises. Even the men aroused themselves 
out of their apathy to stare about in search of the intrud- 
er. The wasp seemed to have been seized with some 
violent hallucination. He was spinning round and round 
the chandelier like a motorcycle on a race track. The 
attention of all the students was focussed on the antics 
of the crazy little beast. Their expression was one of 
commingled amusement and alarm. The teacher at- 
tempted to continue the recitation, but the class could 
think of nothing but the furious revolutions of the wasp. 

Apparently, there was but one solution, the immediate 
annihilation of the intruder. So, snatching up a window 
stick, the instructor like a valiant knight of old advanced 
to the attack and struck out fiercely at the venomous 
creature. The blow missed the wasp, but almost smashed 
the chandelier. The warrior struck again and this time 
a glancing blow knocked the winged opponent against 
the window pane. The blow and the impact of the glass 
pane appeared to have stunned him, for he crouched 
there silent and immobile. The gleaming window stick 
descended and crushed the benumbed creature. The 
poignant suspense of the class vented itself in a sten- 
torian sigh of relief. Flushed with the victory, the wasp- 
slayer marched proudly back to his desk, brandishing his 
weapon aloft. 

"Voila la bataille de la guepe!" he called out. The 
class laughed heartily. The "battle of the wasp" was 
practically the only thing to the teacher's credit that 
occurred during the hour. 

These last four descriptions illustrate the pernicious 
effects of indifferent, lackadaisical personalities. In none 



LOW LEVELS OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 35 

of these classes were the students obtaining results in any 
degree approximating the possible attainments. The 
first two men were teachers of considerable ability and 
grasp of subject, who frittered away the class time with 
banter and tomfoolery ; the two last described were lack- 
adaisical young men who had little enough personality 
as it was, and should have strained every effort to de- 
velop their teaching power so as to 1 produce results. 



Many of the teachers were frigid and stiff in their man- 
ner. Their expression was one of contempt and aloofness, 
and appeared extremely forbidding to the student. 

Teacher Personality No. 13 — Type 6 

In this class the teacher was lecturing on "Heredity 
and Eugenics". He was past middle age. His features 
were large and firmly moulded. As he stood by the 
side of his lecture stand waiting for the class to assemble, 
his appearance was impressive and commanding. 

When he started to speak, however, one suffered a dis- 
tinct shock. Instead of the resonant voice of a deep 
chested man, one heard a thin, high-pitched voice like 
the quavering of a youth. He spoke rapidly, enunciated 
quite distinctly, but his intonation was as monotonous 
as the flatness of a prairie. It was impossible to detect 
from his tone what part of his lecture was essential and 
important, and what incidental and trivial, for he empha- 
sized nothing. 

As he lectured, the settled hardness and coldness of 
his nature revealed itself unmistakably. He seemed as 
incapable of enthusiasm and sympathy as a granite statue. 
His eyes were cold and hard and dull, while his face 
lacked the mobility of expression which reveals a warm, 
sympathetic nature. His influence on the spirit of the 
class was markedly depressing, for the students sat in 
their seats dull and apathetic. 

He had his assistant throw various lantern slides on the 



36 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

screen. This sufficed to arouse momentarily the interest 
of the students, who sat up and craned their necks to 
observe the slides. However, as soon as he commenced 
to explain the slides, they would relapse into their former 
listlessness. Apathy and interest alternated like the 
trough and crest of ocean waves as new slides were fol- 
lowed by tedious, unilluminating" explanations. His com- 
ments were full of long strange, technical terms, which no 
one appeared to understand and which he made no at- 
tempt to define. 

When the lights were turned off to bring out the 
pictures on the screen, the teacher's form, erect and im- 
mobile, could be seen dimly outlined by the reflected 
light thereon. One was then forcibly struck by the im- 
pression that the thin, droning voice was mechanically 
produced in the interior of a cunningly fashioned statue. 
The teacher did not appear capable of a genuine human 
emotion. 



Teacher Personality No. 14 — Type 5 

Another teacher who seemed as cold and unemotional 
as the one preceding, was giving a course in "Physical and 
Applied Geography". He was of middle age, tall and 
spare. What appeared at first glance to be traces of 
laughter and good humor in the corners of his eyes and 
mouth turned out to be markings of an ironic humor and 
a tolerant cynicism. His was not a harsh, arrogant na- 
ture, but it did contain a vein of coldness and mocking 
aloofness. 

His chair was swung around so that his left side was 
presented to the class and as he sat there, he slouched 
back in his chair and his limbs sprawled out with one 
knee crossed over the other. His chin and knees were on 
the same level. He changed his position only once 
during the recitation, when he went to the board to 
point out the course of the Rhine River. 

His mind was as lazy as his body, for while the class 
consisted mostly of mature students, — presumably high 



» LOW LEVELS OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 37 

school and grade teachers, — who had a right to expect 
to gain a broader perspective as well as a deeper grasp 
of the profounder principles of the subject, the course ap- 
peared to be merely a review of fifth, sixth and seventh 
grade geography, identical in matter and spirit with the 
work done in these grades. Nothing was discussed, no 
questions asked or answers given that would have sur- 
passed the grasp of a sixth grade pupil. Not only that, 
but the method of conducting the recitation was of the 
same quality as the subject matter, — mechanical, cut-and- 
dried, and monotonous. The class lacked snap and vim. 
Intelligence and interest were minus qualities. The pe- 
riod was an intellectual backwater, stagnant and brackish. 
The whole trouble could be laid at the door of the 
teacher, for it resulted directly from his peculiar type of 
personality. 

This quality of emotional inertness, this coldness and 
indifference, characterized all too many of the instruct- 
ors. At least twenty of them were of a markedly frigid, 
unsympathetic nature and in twen'ty-four more there 
were traces of this trait. It is folly to expect teachers 
of such personality to accomplish worth while results 
with young people, whose emotional natures are so fresh 
and vigorous and whose enthusiasms are so lively and 
expansive. Coldness is a deadly foe to interest, without 
which little good can come out of classroom instruction. 



Another obstructing personality element is affectation. 

Among college students many of whom still retain their 
adolescent perspicacity, it is fatal for a professor to be af- 
fected. Students have a keen sense of the ridiculous, and 
there is little that escapes their sharp eyes, and does 
not prove fair game for their ridicule and mockery. The 
affectations of the professors furnish inexhaustible 
sources of amusement for the students, and at the same 
time provoke in their hearts a feeling of patronizing 
contemot. 



38 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

Teacher Personality No. 15 — Type 7 

The teacher wore tortoise-shell rimmed glasses of such 
great size that they looked like automobile goggles, and 
distracted the students' attention from what he was say- 
ing. He was a fair, plump young man of about thirty. 
He spoke blandly, with a soft wheedling voice. During 
most of the class hour he sat on a tall stool, swinging his 
leg to and fro. One was reminded of those drawing 
room gods, "eligibles," who pose in front of fireplaces, 
and chatter glibly on all possible subjects, while doting 
mammas and worshipping daughters drink in their golden 
words. 

It was a course in voice training. The subject of his 
talk was the vocal organs. He was speaking of the 
larynx. "With some men the larynx is very large. 
Haven't you ever watched a man's larynx when he is 
eating? The action of it fascinates one." The class, 
mostly girls, watched him soulfully — he was very hand- 
some — with that far away look of people listening to 
soft music. 

He spoke of the peculiarities of certain voices, and as 
an example, he told of a large youth he had heard in a 
cafeteria a few days ago, who talked like a girl. As he 
imitated the youth's voice, the unconscious irony of the 
situation flashed upon one. The difference between his 
own voice and the one he imitated was but the difference 
of a few degrees. 

Voice and tortoise rimmed glasses were admirably 
suited to his nonchalant, affected air and manner. It was 
not enough for him that his appearance and manners 
were affected, but he must treat his intellectual processes 
in the same way. He evinced an unusual attitude toward 
his subject matter, for he appeared to stand apart from 
his subject with his arms akimbo, teasing and befuddling 
it, laughing at it and flirting with it. 

Occasionally he resembled a child, pretending to be 
an actor. He appeared to forget about the class, and 
sometimes seemed to treat it as an imaginary audience. 
His prattle apparently was intended mainly to amuse 



LOW LEVELS OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 39 

himself. For example, he had a number of plaster of 
paris casts, some of the vocal chords, some of the skull. 
He fondled them as a child its dolls, turned his head 
away from the class, and directed his chatter to them. 
Then he would suddenly recollect the presence of his 
class and address himself to his fond admirers. It was 
a ridiculous performance, to say the least. 

There is a great deal of cruelty in most students' 
natures. Students make but little distinction between 
those ridiculous affectations which are preventable, and 
certain physical defects which are unavoidably ludicrous. 
The man next described is an example of a teacher who 
was ridiculous in both appearance and manner, yet is 
classed in personality type 3 because of other qualities 
and powers that even affectations could not entirely sub- 
merge. 

Teacher Personality No. 16 — Type 3 

He was a professor of history whose low cut sailor 
collar revealed a thin pipestem of a neck, upon which was 
perched — most precariously, it seemed — his round, bald 
head, resembling for all the world a large wooden ball on 
the top of a gate post. His weak, squinting little eyes 
were protected from the too curious gaze of his students 
by blue-tinted glasses. A flamboyant, light green necktie 
made large claims on student attention. 

His voice was thin, high-pitched and girlish. He had a 
facile command of words. But he overworked an affec- 
tation of his speech until it became tiresome. For ex- 
ample, he used long "uhs" to link together his loose 
jointed sentences, while he drew generously on his stock 
of "ands", pronounced "awhnd", to bridge the students' 
attention from one idea to another. He used seventy- 
five "uhs" and thirty "awhnds" in five minutes. France 
became "Frawnce"; can't was pronounced "cahnt" and 
dance "dawnce". "Europe", for example, became "Eurip" 
under the wizardry of his tongue. Despite these little 
idiosyncrasies of dress and speech, he was dn the whole 



40 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

quite charming, entertaining - and informing. He was 
bright and humorous, and alert to adjust his sly, whimsi- 
cal humor to the mood of his students, who laughed both 
alternately and simultaneously at his affectations, ludi- 
crous appearance, and witticisms. 



A couple of the men appeared to experience difficulty 
in expressing themselves as fluently and as clearly as 
they wished. 

Teacher Personality No. 17 — Type 7 

A class in "Architecture" was being held in a darkened 
room. A young man with a bald forehead was seated 
behind the lecture desk. A small dim light with a green 
shade illuminated his manuscript. The shade darkened 
his eyes somewhat, but the light shone full on his mouth. 
It was a startling mouth, for it was both enormous and 
ill-shapen. Certain irreverent spirits in the class spoke 
of him as "Newlywed". He spoke so indistinctly that 
one wondered if the size of his mouth did not prevent the 
proper focussing of the sound waves. 

Not only was his enunciation indistinct, but his voice 
was so low that it was practically impossible to catch 
his words. Yet he sat there, blase, nonchalant and assur- 
ed, as though he were a most effective, instead of an al- 
most futile pedagogue. 

Teacher Personality No. 18— Type 8 

Another man was giving a course for football coaches. 
He was a large, powerfully built man. He gave a curious 
talk on liniments, alcohol, wintergreen, bruises, sprains, 
scratches and broken arches. Apparently, he was not a 
man of wonjs, but a man of action, for very often he 
would stop in the middle of a sentence as though stricken 
with sudden aphasia, sputter and choke, and start pacing 



LOW LEVELS OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 41 

the room. His movements were eloquent of an internal 
distress which he had no power to alleviate. 

He maltreated the King's English with the same energy 
and incivility that he usually bestowed upon a tackling 
dummy. He had a predilection for saying "arnicky." The 
term seemed as indispensable to his discourse as the 
article is to football players in their training rooms. His 
ideas appeared to suffer from fearful dislocations and 
rheumatic distortions. The progress of his ideas resem- 
bled the wheezing and snorting ascent of a superannuated 
locomotive up a steep grade, bumping and jerking along. 
There existed no possibility of extracting any humor from 
the situation, for the slow grind of a few phrases inter- 
rupted by sudden jerky pauses was agony for both teach- 
er and students. And yet the man continued his 
attempts at speaking with a desperate, foolhardy cour- 
age. It was a unique but extremely uncomfortable ex- 
perience. 



Tediousness on the part of the instructor in the class- 
room may result from a number of causes. Very rarely 
does it result from a teacher's excessively rapid intellec- 
tion, although such cases may exist. Then tedium results 
because the ideas thrown out by the teacher are too 
unusual and move along too rapidly for the students' 
minds to grasp them. The students cannot hit the same 
pace of intellection and lose interest through sheer ex- 
haustion. The lecturer in the class "The High School 
Recitation" described in the preceding chapter, was a 
good example of rapid, though confused intellection. 
The students could no more follow his rapid train of 
associations and ideas than they would overtake the 
Twentieth Century Limited going at full speed. 

Sometimes students become bored because of too great 
an amount of banter, joking and whimsicality. Living 
on mental froth is unsatisfying; the intellect calls for 
substantial food. Then, too, apathy, coldness, affectation 
and ineptitudes of speech are breeders of boredom. The 
zenith of tediousness, however, is reached in classes 



42 PBRSONALITYCULTURB 

where the teacher is prolix and platitudinous. Nothing 
is so painful as to be subjected to lectures and recitations 
which are discursive and repetitious, and are replete with 
the trite and the obvious. 

An astonishing number of the instructors had develop- 
ed this power of inflicting tedium upon the defenseless 
students. Often the classes of such men were torture 
racks from which there was no escape. 

Teacher Personality No. 19 — Type 7 

The teacher of a class in "Modern German Drama" 
was a young, tall, blond-haired fellow who wore 
glasses, and had already fallen into the manners and tak- 
en on the appearance of the proverbial scholar. 

He talked continuously in a peculiar and erratic kind 
of German. The fault was not so much that the pronun- 
ciation was so execrable, but that the structure of his 
sentences was strange and uncouth. He would propound 
a question, repeat it, and then proceed to recast it into 
two or three different forms, sometimes using complete 
sentences and at other times only phrases. During the 
whole hour he called on only three students individually 
to answer questions. In addition, he asked only a dozen 
leading questions of the class, who mechanically respond- 
ed "Yes" or "No" as the occasion demanded. The rest of 
the time was consumed by his talk, sheer drivel, by 
comments and explanations which were variations of the 
trite and the obvious. 

He possessed a species of alertness which was part of 
his campaign for suppressing thought of any character or 
quantity, for his eyes were constantly searching for the 
laggard and the inattentive and whipping them into a 
state of mechanical eye-allegiance to himself. He strang- 
led all thought and animation. There was no escape from 
the all-encompassing tedium. 



In some classes, however, there existed some loop- 



LOW LEVELS OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 43 

holes for escape from boredom. Some of the classes 
were large, and there the students could take turns nap- 
ping like squads of sentinels relieving each other, could 
read novels, study other lessons, write letters, send notes, 
or whisper gaily. 

Teacher Personality No. 20 — Type 9 

In one class a number of students managed to escape 
the full effects of tediousness, despite the fact that it was 
a small class consisting only of six men and six women. 
Although the room was small and contained only three 
rows of seats, each row had the backs of the seats solidly 
connected, so that they formed bulwarks against the 
prying eyes of the instructor. 

It was a sophomore class in "Composition." The 
teacher was talking about reformed spelling, and was 
inveighing against the tendency to mangle the English 
language. He devoted thirty-five minutes to a tedious 
talk on reformed spelling, which should not have required 
more than ten minutes. His talk consisted of a series of 
loose-jointed, rambling ideas, utterly hackneyed and 
stupid, which the students had probably discarded in the 
grades six or seven years previous. Not one of the stu- 
dents paid any attention to his remarks. Dull and listless 
they sat gazing wearily about the room or staring ab- 
stractedly out of the windows. 

Three of the students were courageous enough to 
emancipate themselves entirely from the tyranny of their 
teacher. One girl was reading Arnold's "Sohrab and 
Rustum," another was reading a French play by Labiche, 
and a third student, a man, was reading some German 
poems. Their absorption was complete, and no doubt the 
other students envied them their brief snatches of 
happiness. During the last fifteen of the fifty minutes 
the teacher attempted to enlist the students' cooperation, 
but with no success. He spent ten minutes in reading a 
composition, then asked for comments. No one had any 
comments to make, so finally the teacher was forced to 



44 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

criticize it himself during the five remaining minutes. 

The two men last described had mediocre, pedestrian 
minds. They were like tortoises crawling along, labor- 
iously examining every inch of ground they covered. 
Not only was their gait plodding, but the ground covered 
had been traversed many times before. 

Teacher Personality No. 21 — Type 5 

Another man observed had this same quality of mind, 
but his fault was not so much that of triteness as of an 
excessive diffusiveness, due to an overanxiety to make 
things clear for the class. He was giving a course in the 
"Teaching of Literature". He was of medium height. 
His brow was finely proportioned and betokened fine in- 
tellectual powers, but a weak chin expressed irresolute- 
ness and timidity. His manner was suave and his voice 
bland. He bent forward in an apologetic manner, and 
he rubbed his hands together in a conciliatory fashion 
like the conventionalized pawnbroker receiving a rich 
customer. Diplomacy and tact oozed from every pore. 

He was advising the students what texts to use. It 
was "One should not do this", "It was better to use that 
text", "This is preferable", "Does not this seem advis- 
able?" "What does the class think of this idea?", until 
one wondered if all his vertebrae had been extracted. 

He seemed to abhor the idea of an argument or a dis- 
cussion. He monopolized almost all the time; occasion- 
ally, he would ask a yes-or-no-question of a student, stop 
a few seconds for an answer, and hurry on. A number 
of times some of the students were on the point of raising 
a question, but the teacher would then talk all the 
faster, and stretch out his hands deprecatingly, like a 
minister hushing up a boisterous Sunday school class. 
Although he was a man of considerable ability, his faults 
— correctable faults — of personality alienated the sym- 
pathy of his students. His effect upon teachers is re- 
curred to in Chapter V. 



LOW LEVELS OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 45 

Teacher Personality No. 22 — Type 4 

It was a class in "English Literature". The teacher 
stalked into the room dragging his feet in a peculiar 
manner. Although he could lift his heel off the floor the 
toe of his shoe scraped on the floor. He was tall, slouchy 
and awkward. His body was a wonderful collection of 
joints, — ankles, knees, hips, fingers, elbows and shoulders. 
A huge Adam's apple and a colossal nose, a close rival 
of Cyrano's, gave the finishing touches to the edifice. 
The man seemed an orgy of knots and protuberances. 
One might have thought that he was an apotheosis of 
Ichabod Crane, only this man's ears were puny upstarts 
in comparison with Ichabod's "flapping sails". 

He was lecturing on Smollet, Fielding, Richardson, 
Sterne, and did not mince his words. His frankness was 
unnecessarily offensive, and he mouthed his innuendoes — 
of which a dozen were recorded by the visitor — as though 
he relished every word. It must have been a disgusting 
experience for the seventeen women of the class, who 
possibly were wondering whether it were vileness or 
justifiable scientific frankness. One speculated whether 
this was his usual procedure or whether the theme and 
subject-matter had temporarily contaminated the man. 
After the class some of the men said he was always like 
this, continually flinging out cynical and salacious re- 
marks. That a detailed classification would rank such a 
personality in type 4 only emphasizes the fact that col- 
lege faculties may not safely condone lack of minimum 
essentials no matter what other qualities of "scholar- 
ships" may be present. 

There exist a few men who are so surcharged with 
energy that they are constantly erupting like active vol- 
canoes. To many students these eruptions usually appear 
ridiculous or affected, and always disconcerting. They 
cannot understand why anyone should concern himself 
so energetically and seriously with the affairs of this 
world. 



46 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

Teacher Personality No. 23— Type 3 

A teacher of "Agricultural Bacteriology" lectured on his 
subject with all the fervor of an old time evangelist. He 
possessed a megaphone voice, which would have suited 
the New York Hippodrome better than this modest class- 
room seating 'thirty-five students. His words came 
rushing out at breakneck speed. His voice rumbled and 
increased to deafening crescendo and then suddenly drop- 
ped to a low diminuendo. One might imagine him to be 
battling furiously with an unseen foe. But, over-exag- 
gerated as his manner might seem, he accomplished his 
purpose, for his principles were driven home with trip- 
hammer blows. 

The man had a tenacious grip on his subject matter. 
Facts and figures were poured profusely in an almost 
continuous seething cascade of words. If he stopped, it 
was only to catch his breath and glance at his notes. 
Like a great tragedian, he projected his deepest and sin- 
cerest emotions into his subject. His voice became 
thick and choked when he talked about the number of 
people who had succumbed to typhoid fever and tuber- 
culosis from impure milk. One was drawn into his own 
raging maelstrom of feelings, as he declaimed on the 
horrors of infant mortality caused by contaminated milk 
and made a plea for the necessity of pasteurizing it. 

He also delivered an impassioned speech on the manu- 
facture of cheese. Eight varieties of cheese had been 
placed on the lecture table, and suffused the room with 
their pungent, heavy odors. Their odoriferous po- 
tency almost rivaled the lecturer's eloquence. It was an 
unforgettable symphony of sounds and smells. 

The teacher had certainly mastered the principle of 
emphasis and the trick of appealing to as many senses of 
his students as possible. One wondered if he would 
allow us to taste of his cheese, but this he did not permit 
us to do. However, one felt apologetically grateful that 
he showed greater consideration for our palates and 
stomachs than for our ears and noses. As it was, with- 



LOW LEVELS OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 47 

out this additional appeal to our sense of taste, his lecture 
made a lasting impression. It was unfortunate that a man 
built physically and intellectually on such a heroic order 
could not obtain a far greater arena for the exercise of 
his powers. 

Summary of Low Level Personalities 

It was distressing and disheartening to observe such a 
large proportion of tattered and ill-kempt and low-level 
personalities among seventy-two university instructors. 
Some of them retained many of their adolescent traits, 
such as banter, frivolity, superciliousness, conceit, and 
affectations of dress and manner. Others had sloughed 
off these, but had gained in their stead few, if any, of the 
sterling qualities of maturity. A number were apathetic, 
indifferent, indolent, fawning or cynical. Several ap- 
peared to be in their dotage, were senile and ineffectual. 
Others were cold, arrogant, unsympathetic, unresponsive 
and diffusive. Many of the men described in this chapter 
were indolent, anemic natures, whom a generous supply 
of vital energy would have destroyed, as a powerful 
engine would wreck a rotten hulk. 

All of these low-level teachers seemed to lack the 
power of self criticism. They could not see themselves 
as their students saw them, and readjust themselves to 
the requirements of the situation. They did not appear to 
realize that their affectations provoked ridicule on the 
part of the students, that excessive banter irritated them 
and bred a feeling of contempt, that their coldness alien- 
ated the interest and affection of the students, that their 
insincerity and apathy aroused disgust, and that their 
diffusiveness and triteness bored painfully. Some teach- 
ers seemed oblivious to the fact that although they pos- 
sessed considerable power they were not obtaining re- 
sults. Others did not realize that they themselves had 
practically nothing to give the students. Some were 



48 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

bluffs, knew it, but persisted; others were so egotistical 
that they deliberately ignored the students, 

Many of these men, especially the younger, could easily 
take themselves in hand, and reshape and develop their 
personalities, if they were helped to realize their short- 
comings and to apply themselves to personality culture. 



For Questions or Notes by Readers 



CHAPTER IV 
PERSONALITIES PLUS 

Under the present scheme of higher education, it is 
largely in the classroom that the vast spiritual treasures 
of the past generations are transmitted to the rightful 
heirs, the youth of the new generation. It is here that 
the great canvasses of the past are flashed upon the 
mental screens of the youth, so that their minds may gain 
perspective and see the world in its three dimensions. 
The present must be stripped of its baffling complexity 
and its fundamental order and framework laid bare. 
Young hungry minds must be nourished and quickened 
to multiform activity, noble passions must be aroused, 
enduring interests kindled, and eager souls swung into 
action. 

It was gratifying to observe that a number of the 
teachers had comprehended the more significant and com- 
prehensive potentialities of the classroom and at the 
same time had the ability and the desire to develop and 
utilize them. The preceding chapter depicted a gallery of 
rather displeasing and ineffectual personalities. Fortun- 
ately, they had their opposites. What follows will pre- 
sent an exposition of eight personalities who, but for 
exceptional traits, were serious and well-balanced, force- 
ful, enthusiastic, sympathetic, pleasing, and in many 
cases charming. These range from highest types of 
mental and spiritual excellence to types which are con- 
siderably above the average in qualities that inspire 
students to high levels of thought and effort. 

A number of these teachers were men of generous 
mental endowments, of high attainments, and of great 
energy and poise. A few possessed the qualities of true 
greatness; exceptional powers of acquisition, indefatig- 
able zeal, and a vast capacity for work. Some were of 
restless intellectual curiosity, of retentive memories, of 



50 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

penetrating insight, with a rapacious appetite for fresh 
knowledge, a driving enthusiasm and contagious sym- 
pathy. Others were not so highly endowed, were of les- 
ser mental stature, but fine, sincere and winning. A few 
finely wrought and highly finished minds were discovered, 
men of delicacy and sensitivity, keen, witty, and scintil- 
lating. 

Two of the men were frank and open-hearted, and 
were so generously endowed with broad, human sym- 
pathies, that their kindness, tolerance and good nature 
seemed inexhaustible. Their sympathies had so sharp- 
ened their intuitions that in presenting their ideas, they 
knew exactly how to make them lucid and transparent 
to the class. Instinctively they appreciated the specific 
difficulties of certain ideas, and took particular pains to 
clear them up. Some teachers project their ideas at the 
student in much the same fashion as mud geysers eject 
their columns of mud. The more such men talk, the 
more they befuddle the students. But these two men 
seemed to invite you down through pellucid depths into 
spacious submarine galleries of glass, through whose 
transparent walls you could observe the profound and 
hidden mysteries of life and nature. 

Teacher Personality No. 24 — Type 1 

It was a class in education termed "The Treatment 
and Training of Atypical Cases", consisting of twenty- 
four students, nine of whom were women. The teacher 
was a gigantic fellow, tall and powerfully built, with a 
massive head and strong features. He reminded one of 
the magnificent Porthos in the "Three Musketeers". 
During the first two or three minutes of the hour, he 
struck one as being cold, almost apathetic, but after he 
commenced talking and drawing out his students the 
first impression was soOn dispelled. Apparently, his 
mind was of the same great proportions as his frame, 
and required some time to gain momentum. During the 
first five minutes, he made announcements of various 



PERSONALITIES PLUS 51 

texts to be used as references. He spoke easily and dis- 
tinctly, and his voice was rich and sonoitms. He began 
his lecture proper as follows : 

"In classifying children they are divided into two class- 
es, the normal and the defective. But there are also some 
cases which are doubtful, and these are said to be on the 
border line. The term border line is merely a conven- 
ient refuge for ignorance. The definiteness of such 
cases will come out in the offspring, and they will show 
whether these persons are defective or normal. The 
point is to know this before children are born." 

Then he went to show the final tests which distinguish 
the normal from the defective in borderline cases. Chil- 
dren of the same degree of backwardness of five years 
must be judged by their potentiality, not by their ac- 
quisition. The same is true of two children backward 
at eight years, for either or both may be "aments". It 
is during puberty that the distinction between those 
merely temporarily backward and those permanently 
backward becomes clear. 

'"Children at puberty," he said, "have a tremendous 
growth in brain tissue and fibres ; they have a new supply 
of soldiers to be mobilized, to be drilled to fight the bat- 
tle of life. The problem of backward children is not 
what they have attained, but what is their mental po- 
tentiality for puberty. MENTAL POTENTIALITY 
should be written like NEW THOUGHT with capital 
ietters to make it look like something. Suppose we have 
two children of fifteen years. Suppose both appear back- 
ward. Then what are the problems? In this case would 
we examine their capacity?" 

"Yes," answered the class. 

"The first that must be done is to remove all physical 
defects, allow a certain period, so that there has been 
time for adjustment, then we may examine their ca- 
pacity." 

He was very careful to make sure that the terms used 
were fully understood by the class to head off wrong 
conceptions. 



52 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

"What is the difference between amentia and demen- 
tia?" he asked. 

"Amentia is the lack of a fully developed mind," an- 
swered a student. 

"Can an ament be a dement?" 

"No," said the class, "anyone becoming a dement must 
start right." 

He then commenced a discussion of the physical de- 
fects which cause backwardness among school children. 
He enumerated a number of these defects and commenc- 
ed an exposition of adenoids. This included their defini- 
tion, the signs of their presence, and the immediate and 
remote effects of enlarged adenoids. The gong sounded 
before he had completed his talk on adenoids. 

During the whole hour he had stood on his feet behind 
a lecture stand. Occasionally he would turn to the black- 
board to draw a diagram, make an outline or write out 
an unusual word, for the purpose of eliminating all ob- 
scurities of subject matter. In addition to his gift of 
clear exposition he possessed that most desirable quality 
of a teacher, the knack of heading off all possible mis- 
conceptions and preventing twisted ideas from striking 
root in his students' minds. He appeared to realize just 
what things were difficult to understand and took special 
pains to drive these home. He had mastered the great 
principles of emphasis. The students were left in no doubt 
as to what was or was not important. In addition, he 
enlisted the cooperation of the class. The students' 
minds worked in unison under his guidance like a com- 
pany of well drilled soldiers. He asked them questions 
and demanded their opinions on various subjects. 

The teacher was winning, open and frank. He treated 
the students with an air of intimacy and displayed a 
spirit of camaraderie that quite won their hearts. 

He was saturated with his subject, with knowledge 
gained not only from books, but from laboratories, clinics 
and public schools. So easy, so fluent was his command 
of the subject, that he seemed like a conjurer who could 
by some power of psychic legerdemain adapt the matter 
to suit the minds of every member of the class. His was 



PERSONALITIES PLUS 53 

a nature in which sympathy and knowledge seemed in- 
terfused. The same intuitive power by which he appre- 
hended his students' needs and difficulties had commu- 
nicated itself to the students, so that they in their turn 
were able to perceive his meaning quickly. This give- 
and-take was like the magic interplay of spirits which 
sometimes springs up between an actor and his audience. 
He was a man of dynamic energy, with an active and 
powerful mind and an upwelling sympathy. His was an 
inspiring and strengthening personality, which later fig- 
ures as one of the four 100% personalities noted in this 
study. 

Teacher Personality No. 25 — Type 3 

It was a course in "Rural Sociology." The class con- 
sisted of twenty-three men and nine women, most of 
them mature, some middle-aged. The teacher was a 
short, thick-set man of about fifty years, jovial and im- 
perturbably good natured. His manner was assured, 
simple and direct. From his first statement it was ap- 
parent that he was a man of enthusiasm and idealism. 

"If you can meet a dynamic man for two dollars, do 
so by all means. I once walked twenty miles to hear 
Henry Ward Beecher . I have made journeys to great 
men as to Meccas," he said and commenced to recount 
a number of his similar experiences. 

Suddenly he stopped short in his discussion of this 
subject, and apologized to the class for having strayed 
from the topic for the day's lesson. He then commenced 
his consideration of the lesson, which was an exposition 
of the family life on the farm. He spoke of the dominat- 
ing influences of the man on the farm. Hitherto, the 
man had lorded it over the women, sons and daughters, 
who had virtually been merely servants. Now a modern 
farm is coming to resemble a business concern, for the 
farmer has his business office where he keeps his ac- 
counts and carries on his correspondence. Sons and 
daughters are given their own rooms, receive spending 



54 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

money and time off, while the women are not the drudges 
they once were. Women are beginning to demand the 
modernization of the farmhouses, servants and good 
clothes. Upon women depends the complete socializa- 
tion of farm life. 

"Farm life is the bulwark of the home life of the 
nation," he said, "the farm is the breeding ground of 
people of stamina." He told of an incident of a horse- 
buyer who would not buy a team of horses which had 
been raised in Chicago. He wanted nothing but country 
bred horses. 

Just then a beautiful collie wandered into the room, 
sniffed about and disappeared. 

"He is just an auditor, not signed up yet," flashed out 
the teacher. 

All this was preliminary to a detailed consideration of 
definite attempts that farmers in the state had been mak- 
ing towards socialization. Farmers' Clubs, Women's 
Clubs, and the Commercial Clubs of Villages which wel- 
come the farmer were concrete examples of a growing 
community spirit among rural dwellers. The teacher was 
full of his subject, he appeared to have worked shoulder 
to shoulder with the farmers in their attempts to or- 
ganize their clubs. He mentioned the names of many of 
the clubs, knew personally the presidents, secretaries and 
prime movers in these activities. He passed around pic- 
tures of members, officers and buildings of some of the 
clubs and of various fairs and exhibits which had resulted 
from this form of cooperation. 

His talk was packed with good, hard common sense 
and full of concrete suggestions as to improving the 
conditions on the farms and arousing and coordinating 
community spirit. Flis subject was the breath of his 
nostrils. 

He had many amusing experiences to relate and his 
talk was sprinkled with odd phrases recurring again and 
again. He radiated good nature and sympathy, laughed 
heartily at the remembrance of past experiences, and 
was equally ready to laugh at similar accounts from the 
students. The class was like a genial social club, of 



PERSONALITIES PLUS 55 

which the teacher was the leader, who saw to it that there 
was a definite program run-off per schedule. 

Some of the teachers who possessed great intellectual 
power, high attainments and mastery of their domains of 
thought still appeared to lack proper emotional equip- 
ment. They were cold, formal, distant and unsympathet- 
ic. They dazzled their students with their brilliant 
attainments, but did not win their affections or arouse 
them to great sustained effort. The two men described 
next were examples of this type of personality. 

Teacher Personality No. 26 — Type 2 

It was a class in the "German Novel." The teacher 
was about forty years old, tall and finely proportioned. 
His was a serene countenance that betokened the pres- 
ence of a majestic intelligence and a lofty spirit, of poise 
and sincerity, and a pervasive, tempered zeal. 

He lectured in German, a beautiful, melodious, flowing 
German. His sentence structure was supple and mus- 
cular, his diction elevated, and his style adorned by the 
treasures of beautiful figures of speech and by jeweled 
utterances of noble souls. 

He spoke first of the great Goethe, and commenced 
chiseling away the incrustation of fiction that concealed 
the real Goethe in "Dichtung and Wahrheit," comparing 
the true image with that presented in "The Sorrows of 
Werther" and "The Vicar of Sesenheim." He compared 
the other characters of Goethe's novels with their pro- 
totypes in real life, and traced the similarities and dif- 
ferences between the related and actual incidents. The 
various influences upon Goethe of other writers, Rous- 
seau, Goldsmith, Richardson, etc., were brought out. 

He read his lecture from manuscript fluently and clear- 
ly. He was careful to make everything clear to the class. 
He would repeat the antecedents of his pronouns, would 
write out on the board the names of unfamiliar characters 
and people as he came across them in his lecture. His 
discussion of Goethe's novels showed- an intimate know- 



56 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

ledge of that author's works. The teacher's pertinent 
observations when comparing the fictitious with the real 
Goethe, gave proof of extensive reading and scholarly- 
research, and displayed exceptional qualities of pene- 
tration and judgment. 

The lecture was the finished product of a highly gift- 
ed and well trained mind. It was well suited to the au- 
dience which consisted of mature students of intelligence 
and apparently good training. To understand, it presup- 
posed a broad grasp of literary movements and an intimate 
knowledge of Goethe's works. Whether or not the 
teacher had taken steps to test the students' knowledge 
could not be determined. 

The one great fault of the class procedure was that 
the teacher did not ask the students any questions or 
attempt to enlist their active cooperation. Furthermore, 
his personality was too cold and distant to inspire the 
average student. Ordinarily, this kind of a lecture is a 
poor vehicle of instruction. The redeeming feature of 
this particular lecture was the opportunity accorded the 
class to sit and listen to the polished expression of a 
finely cultured mind, and to become acquainted with such 
a distinctive and admirable personality. 

Teacher Personality No. 27 — Type 2 

A class in "The Crusades" had assembled for the day's 
lecture. At the stroke of the gong, the teacher strode in 
and seated himself — for the hour — at the desk. He was 
of medium height, thick set, well past middle age, with 
a bald forehead and iron gray Van Dyke beard. 

He spoke with great deliberation, his voice was thick 
and heavy, with a peculiar rising inflection at the end of 
each sentence. One gained an impression of a vast men- 
tal energy lurking in this physical bulk. Preliminary 
to his lecture, he gave the sources of his material. They 
consisted of works in French, German, English and 
Latin. The one in Latin was a translation of an old 
Saracenic writer, Ossanna, a man, who had lived about 



PERSONALITIES PLUS 57 

one hundred years. 

The teacher said he would give the picture of the 
period, first from the viewpoints of the Saracen writers, 
Ossanna among them, and then from the Christian chron- 
iclers. He would give fthe facts and the class might 
draw their own conclusions, and determine what was the 
real condition of life during the Crusades. The period 
discussed was that succeeding the Crusaders' conquest 
of Jerusalem, when they were engaged in keeping the 
Saracens at bay. He related the events of the life of the 
Saracenic author, Ossanna, and spoke of his education 
and his activities. Then he quoted some of Ossanna's 
observations about the Christians and the Saracens. 
Apparently Ossanna had found plenty of opportunity to 
acquire a thorough understanding of the Christians. 

"This was easy enough," said the teacher, "because 
there was probably less fighting in Syria during this 
period of the Crusades than in Western Europe." 

Ossanna told of the Christians' knowledge of medicine 
and compared it with that of the Arabs. The Arabs were 
very skillful in the use of drugs and herbs to cure wounds, 
but the Christians used the axe to get results as soon as 
possible. Amputations were the fashion. Sometimes 
the Christians had eruptions on their bodies, and since 
they appeared on their faces and noses, the habit of the 
axe occasioned some trying experiences. 

He told how the pious French scholars who translated 
the Saracenic books had made many amusing mistakes. 
In their excessive zeal they had interjected expressions 
of praise or blame and often would transpose the mean- 
ing of bless and curse. Hence, often there is found the 
expression, "May Allah curse them," addressed to the 
Christians and this "May Allah bless them," when in- 
tended for the Saracens. For instance, in one place 
Ossanna is rendered by chroniclers as follows: "I visited 
my friend, the Frank, may Allah curse him !" 

The Saracens had a vast contempt for Franks, especial- 
ly for their amusements, and made sport of their piggeries 
and pig-catching. "Wherever you find Franks, you will 
find pigs," they said. "May Allah forgive me for men- 



58 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

tioning such a vile object," were the words of a sheik, 
when speaking of a Frank. 

A Frank who had been wounded, wanted to see the 
Saracen who had hit him such a tremendous crack. The 
Saracens gave him a safe conduct to satisfy his pardon- 
able curiosity. 

"Whenever a Christian writer wants to refer to a 
Syrian, he gives him the name of some Philistine or 
heretic," said the teacher. "He is correct, all the heresies 
of the world have originated there." 

He also gave the Christians' impressions of the Saracens 
and of their own life. The manner and customs of the 
Saracens had a beneficial effect upon the Christians. 
They gained fineness and polish, and learned many of the 
courtesies and comforts of life through their contact 
with the Saracens. 

The teacher had a tenacious grip on his subject. A 
vast number of concrete facts and specific details were 
steadily brought forth to reconstruct the pictures of this 
bygone age. It is true that while sometimes the out- 
lines of the pictures were confused, nevertheless one 
could not help admiring the wealth of material the teacher 
poured out with such quiet, inexhaustible energy. There 
seemed no end to his knowledge. One imagined he 
could sit and multiply details after details for years. And 
there he sat, imperturbable, impassive and immovable as 
a great statue. He did not even smile at his own flashes 
of irony. Neither lips nor eyes betrayed the presence of 
anything but a settled gravity. His was a calm and ma- 
jestic nature whose vast activities proceeded leisurely, 
yet persistently, irresistibly carried along by the momen- 
tum of its previous activity. The finest teaching results 
were not obtained because of a cold and unsympathetic 
personality accentuated by his sitting throughout the hour 
and giving his students no opportunity or need to show 
if they were grasping his masterly presentation. 

Others of the eight ablest teachers were of less com- 
manding intellects, but keen, alert, flexible and sympa- 



PERSONALITIES PLUS 69 



thetic. They were men of fine spirit, charming and witty. 
The three men next described belong to this type. 



Teacher Personality No. 28 — Type 3 

"The pageant is the drama of the history and life of a 
community showing how the character of that community 
as a community has been developed ; is W. C. Langdon's 
definition of a pageant," began the teacher in a class in 
"Festivals and Pageants." 

"Here is another definition, formulated by Lewis W. 
Parker: A pageant is a representation of the history of a 
town from the earliest period to some later point forming 
a fitting climax. It is not a stage play ; it is the lofty and 
dignified panorama of the town's history." He read 
rapidly and distinctly. The man was alert, his manner 
and appearance were charming, poised and vigorous. 
His face was oval, its shape accentuated by a pointed 
beard, light brown in color. The face was sensitive, but 
expressed resolution, and that steel-like strength which 
characterizes Frenchmen of fine spirit. His smile had 
an underlying seriousness. 

He read two other definitions of the pageant, and 
asked the class to name the pageants they had heard of 
or seen. Then as the various pageants were mentioned, 
the students would compare their characteristics with 
those called for by the definitions. One after the other 
he called on the members of the class, — twenty-four in 
number. The Rockford and the Whitewater pageants, 
the pageant of the Star Spangled Banner, the pageant of 
the missionary, the St. Louis pageant, and the mask in 
La Crosse were mentioned among many others. Some 
of the students could not think of any. 

As they compared the characteristics of the pageants 
mentioned with that demanded by the definitions they 
discovered that the illustrations did not fit the definition. 

"All right," said the teacher, "We must change the 
definition to fit the reality." He spoke of the Pageant 
of Nations, which was not an orthodox pageant. 



60 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

"One always thinks of the pomp and circumstances of 
the pageant. There is a great display, a long procession 
of persons," he went on. "That is what was meant by 
pageants before Mr. Parker came along and defined it." 

He was dexterous in his contact with his students. 
He had an intuitive knack of setting them at ease, of win- 
ning their confidence and enlisting their cooperation. A 
genial tolerance and a ready open-mindedness were the 
salient characteristics of his personality. He had a subtle 
air of deference towards the women which quite reassur- 
ed them and set them at ease. His wit was tinged with 
a delicate whimsicality. It was pleasing and stimulating 
to sit in his class. 



Teacher Personality No. 29 — Type 3 

It was a course in "Shakespeare's Historical Plays." 
The teacher, whose physiognomy resembled that of a Jap- 
anese, was a small, dark man who wore glasses with thick 
lenses. His appearance and mannerisms were those of 
the traditional scholar. 

The class work for the day appeared to consist largely 
of a detailed study of the style and diction of Shake- 
speare's "King Richard II". Peculiarities of word usage, 
striking phrases, unusual meters, and all the idiosyncra- 
sies of its language were noted. He traced the geneology 
of many of the words rapidly and crisply. He seemed to 
have a good grasp of Anglo-Saxon and Latin and a pre- 
cise and comprehensive knowledge of philology. He 
stated simply that he had bicycled many times over Eng- 
land. He appeared intimately acquainted with the geog- 
raphy of the scene of the play and described the places 
mentioned in the play. He had a very good map of 
England on the wall, and referred constantly to this, 
pointing out locations of towns and castles, streams, 
hills, valleys, parks, and manors. It was very illuminating 
to listen to his quiet expositions of English geography. 

The teacher's mannerisms were peculiar, but not dis- 
tressing. When searching for a word or idea, he would 



PERSONALITIES PLUS 61 

roll his eyes toward the ceiling, and then suddenly jerk 
his head down and glance sharply at the class. Some- 
times he would clasp his hands together with his arms 
extended stiffly in front. His speech and all his motions 
were sharp, quick and precise. 

His knowledge of English political history, of the cus- 
toms and laws of the period, appeared to be as exact and 
exhaustive as his philological and geographical lore. 

One might have supposed that this leisurely precision, 
this exhaustive attention to minute details, would prove 
extremely tedious to the class, but the reverse was true. 
The class seemed imbued with the same quiet passion 
for accuracy that characterized the teacher. It was in 
marked contrast to the impatient, slipshod work done in 
many other classes, in which not nearly the same atten- 
tion was demanded of the students. 

This interest of the class was probably due to a certain 
exactness, keenness, and crispness of the teacher's mind. 
He demanded these same qualities of his students, and 
encouraged them to point out their independent discov- 
eries and observations of the peculiarities of language. 
The class had gained considerable power in observing 
and thinking for themselves. When he called for reci- 
tations the students would respond quickly and accurate- 
ly. Their senses of sight and hearing were on the alert to 
observe every motion and word of the teacher. It was 
splendid training for these hurly-burly, impatient young 
Americans to work with a man of such patient exactness 
and penetration, of such precise and exhaustive know- 
ledge. His mental qualities were productive because of 
engaging personality elements, sympathy, interest in in- 
dividual students and sincerity. 



Teacher Personality No. 30 — Type 5 

A dark little Frenchman was conducting a class in 
French conversation. He had a black beard which he 
caressed with his right hand, while his black, snappy 
eyes glanced rapidly about. He was alert, vivacious and 



62 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

witty. 

He spoke only French — very little English was used 
even by the students in the class — and gesticulated con- 
tinually. All his motions were quick and sharp like those 
of a wild creature of the woods. His habit of tugging at 
his beard would occasionally blur his words, interfering 
to a small extent with the clearness of his enunciation. 
Usually, however, it was easy to understand what he 
said. 

It was 'the thirteenth of July. The teacher reminded 
the class that the morrow would be the fourteenth, the 
French Fourth of July. 

''You may not show sympathy towards France tomor- 
row in this building, but you may do so outside if you 
choose." He spoke in French. He announced a lecture 
in French that was to be held on the morrow, and spoke 
of arrangements for a picnic of the French classes. 

Then he called on a girl to take his place behind the 
desk. The two exchanged positions; she to assume the 
role of the teacher, he to become a student. The girl 
read an original story in French, in which she told about 
a canoe trip on the lake, a storm coming up, the excite- 
ment of paddling to shore, the return home and the 
mother's anxiety about her daughter's safety. It was 
well done, executed in fine, free strokes, short, but with 
vivid description and sharp flashes of observation. The 
language used was charming. She had a fine feeling for 
apt words and phrases. 

The class listened attentively during the reading. 
When she had finished reading, she asked a few questions 
based on the story and called on various students to 
answer them. The students were ready with replies, 
some serious and answering the question directly, others 
evasive, playing on words and twisting the meaning. 
The impromptu teacher would reprove the flippant with 
mock sternness, while the impromptu student would nod 
his head approvingly, call "bravo" and flash out a witty 
remark. When the latter was called on to recite — as he 
sometimes was, although the school mistress did not 
show an overdue partiality, he would break out into a 



PERSONALITIES PLUS 63 

flood of French, ironic, and satirically catching her up on 
the improbabilities of the story. But the young instruc- 
tress would brook no insubordination. 

"Listen, Monsieur," she would break in, "you forget 
yourself. Remember to whom you are speaking. Do not 
become rude." (All this was in French.) 

"Ah, to be sure, Mademoiselle. Pardon me. Truly T 
have forgotten myself. I should have remembered that 
women are goddesses, above all criticism and reproach," 
returned the offender, cleverly shifting the implication 
of her reproof that respect was due her as the teacher. 
He stood up, bowed humbly, and seated himself meekly. 
It was delightful, the whole class was permeated with a 
fine spirit, and most of the students seemed to catch this 
fine French spirit of raillery and respond to it. Nimble 
tongues flung back sharp retorts, and quick, glinting ideas 
were shuttled back and forth. 

Another girl was called on to read her story after the 
discussion of the first was exhausted. She had written 
up an incident about a little girl, Rosette, who was very 
poor and very plain in her appearance. But Rosette had 
a very lively imagination, and felt keenly her poverty and 
plainness. She was always imagining herself rich and 
beautiful, always popular and receiving attentions from 
a host of admirers. One day she found a beautiful rose 
on the street which some rich lady had probably dropped 
from a carriage. Soon after she met a number of her 
girl friends and told them that her rich young adorer 
had sent her a dozen of these roses. Her companions 
would not believe her, she must prove it, and they would 
accompany Rosette home to find out. They did so, but 
discovered no flowers. "Menteuse," they called to the 
little deceiver and left her in high disdain. 

The story was cleverly handled, and aroused an ani- 
mated discussion. At first the authoress maintained 
command of the situation. But soon the students broke 
away from her control, and demanded to know more a- 
bout this little girl. Where did she live — what were her 
parents like — had she read much — what was to become of 
her — did her habit of lying grow on her — etc. The teach- 



64 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

er was bombarded with questions. She could not answer 
them all. The class swung into a discussion of the hor- 
rors of lying. Some said it was dreadful, others said it 
was necessary, that clever lying was a virtue. Rosette's 
fault was that she was found out. It was very amusing. 
The whole class had become infected with a spirit of 
delicate humor. 

If a teacher is to be judged by the spirit of indepen- 
dence and the self-activity of his students, and by the 
personality his students evince, surely this teacher de- 
served a high reward. 

Teacher Personality No. 31 — Type 1 

The next man described evinced the most consummate 
mastery of the art of teaching that the visitor has ever 
observed. Greater intellects and stronger personalities 
have been encountered, and a vaster display of attainment 
witnessed, but never one who was so indisputably a mas- 
ter of his craft. His is the fourth 100% personality among 
the seventy-two instructors here reported. 

A class of fifty students, only four of them men, was 
assembled for the last recitation of the summer session. 
It was a course in the "Teaching of German." The 
teacher entered the classroom promptly on the hour. He 
was a tall, angular man. As he paced nervously back 
and forh across the room with soft, springy steps, he 
seemed the embodiment of alertness. His mind possessed 
a leaping, flashing energy. Every eye in the room re- 
turned the glow of his eyes' fire. 

"I shall sum up briefly the ground we have covered in 
this course," he began, as he glanced at some meager 
notes. Then in a few statements he had summarizd the 
work of the whole summer session. It was a tour de 
force that bespoke great energy and brilliance of mind. 

He then tossed up a few questions and called on stu- 
dents to express their views. The students attacked the 
problem with the dash and skill of trained soldiers. 

*'Let us consider a few questions on modern language 



PERSONALITIES PLUS 65 

instruction which have been sent me by teachers through- 
out the state," he said. 

"The first question is : How much stress should be put 
on concert reading", and what is the advantage of it?" 
He called on a number of students by name. 

''It will encourage weaker students who are timid," 
said one student. "The muscles of the voice are trained, 
it affords opportunity for motor expression, and saves 
time," came from a second student. "It checks faulty 
pronunciation of a certain few pupils and they get strong- 
er auditory sensation," said a third. "It keeps the class 
awake," remarked the fourth student. The students had 
answered clearly and concisely. 

The teacher then gave his view on the subject. "I 
should use it mainly for the first and fourth reasons," he 
said, "it encourages the timid and keeps the class awake. 
The last reason is the most salient one. Again if you 
have a large class to deal with, in concert recitation 
you give them all a chance. If you have individuals who 
are particularly handicapped, you must speak to them 
after class. You ought not spend too much time with 
individuals, for it is robbing the class of its time. A 
knowledge of phonetics comes in handy at such a place. 
Sometimes the trouble is physical and requires medi- 
cal aid, or perhaps it is incurable." 

He took up another slip of paper. "The second ques- 
tion is: What do you think of work at the board, is it 
mainly a means for drilling or is it a good way to save 
work on the part of the teacher?" The instructor then 
called upon various students for their opinions. 

"I would send them to the board just to write the 
sentences," said one. 

"Would you consider it a crime to write a declension 
on the board?" asked the teacher. 

"No," returned the student. 

"Have the students put a whole declension on the 
board, not a small part," continued the teacher, "it is 
easier to retain the whole, although it is possibly easier 
to learn the small part." 

"I should send two or three to the front board," vol- 



66 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

unteered a student. 

"I should send two or three to the back board," re- 
marked the teacher. 
"Why?" 

"So as not to distract the other students." 
"But the other students want to see their work," ob- 
jected another of the students. 

"But we do not want them to do this, we want the rest 
of the class to be occupied during this time," replied the 
teacher. "Take the example of a mixed class, of Anglo- 
Americans and German-Americans. Give a good deal 
of outside reading to the German-Americans, have them 
write their resumes in German, keep the pupils busy 
and there will be no need for discipline." 

Another student volunteered. "The purpose of the 
board work should be to give tests in spelling. If one or 
two were deficient, 1 would give them individual atten- 
tion." This answer did not seem acceptable, for the 
class demurred strongly. 

"What is the objection?" asked the teacher. 
"Because you are taking the time of the class for the 
benefit of the few." 

"Would you send the poorer or the better students to 
the board?" asked the teacher. 

"I should send the better students to the board, for 
they would work faster and save time," was the answer. 
"I would send the poorer students to the board," said 
another, "for then their mistakes are brought out more 
clearly. If the pupils make a mistake, then the correc- 
tion of it is striking, hence I should send the poor stu- 
dents." 

"It would be better for the pupils if they did go to 
the board, because otherwise they do not get the mus- 
cular action of writing, I should give them assignments 
in rotation and give everyone a chance," was another 
opinion. Others had their ideas : "It is better to correct 
the oral work, because then the mistake or wrong idea 
would not have time to take root or make a permanent 
impression." "The more who do board work the better, 
for pupils like justice." "Board work gives justice to 



PERSONALITIES PLUS 67 

those who are poor in pronunciation, who can express 
themselves in writing." 

There was a flood of conflicting opinions. "Shall I 
settle this strike?" interrupted the teacher smilingly. 
"Let me tell you that I believe in board work. I should 
send the pupils in rotation. I should give harder sen- 
tences to the brighter pupils. Writing fixes things, makes 
a more permanent impression. This gives justice to the 
pupil who does not pronounce well. But don't utilize 
the whole board, giving an assignment to each pupil, for 
then you spend too much time correcting all the mistakes, 
and you will get nothing but board work done during the 
hour. I should treat the class like one in mathematics 
and give more credit to those who do more work." 

A number of other questions were discussed in a simi- 
lar fashion. 

It was a dramatic display of teaching personality and 
efficiency. The teacher stood on his feet during the 
whole hour. His whole manner and attitude expressed 
assurance, resourcefulness and sagacity. He was like a 
great general in battle, who was marshalling his force 
for a vigorous attack. His students were like well drilled 
soldiers, awake, trained to think, to speak, to defend 
their own opinion and criticise severely those of others. 
Amid this lively rivalry, the teacher stood alive to the 
weight, the bearing and the shrewdness of every thrust 
given and of every defense made. Then after the skir- 
mish was over, he would rapidly seize the main points 
of the discussion and combine them in a final summary. 

The class gave proof of great cumulative progress. 
The minds of the students had been trained to think in 
similar terms, to watch with a hawk's eye the progress 
of the recitation, to pounce upon the essentials, to attack 
the vulnerable and to defend that of real value. The 
keen, ready judgments of the students were based on 
well grounded principles of pedagogy, — the principles of 
motor expression, of preventing diffused attention, of the 
utilization of all the senses in learning, etc. In addition 
the students had a clear realization of practical problems 
of the classroom and the mechanics of recitations. Dur- 



68 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

ing these six weeks the teacher had implanted the basic 
principles of classroom procedure, and had trained his 
students to apply them skillfully to concrete situations. 
The man was tall, rather gaunt, with high cheek bones, 
and quick eyes. His smile was like the smile of a lovely 
landscape, — a smile that opened the vista of all the earn- 
estness, the kindliness, the humor, the sweetness of a 
lifetime of active, purposeful and beautiful living. Here 
was a man purged of puerile vanity, a man of whose 
character modesty was an integral and unconscious qual- 
ity. His personality was magnetic and powerfully at- 
tractive. He received you into the splendid halls of his 
nature, as one peer meets another, with a ready and im- 
plicit confidence that was a poignant exhilaration. The 
visitor left this class with the conviction that here was 
one of nature's noblemen, whose splendid intellectual 
gifts, whose broad, fervent sympathies and dynamic zeal 
were whole heartedly devoted to the task of illuminating 
the minds and energizing the wills of his students and 
fellow beings. 



If personality can win appointment, pro- 
motion, dismissal 

If it makes one such a good fellow that 
his time is wasted in good fellowship 

If it causes students to flock to or from 
an instructor's course 

If it draws students like a magnet for 
conference 

If it wins confidence 

If it compels and expresses thoroughness 

Why, pray, is it impossible to describe it? 

Self Surveys by Colleges and Universities, 
P. 274 



CHAPTER V 
PERSONALITY AND TEACHER TRAINING 

The beneficiaries or maleficiaries of the thirty-one per- 
sonalities thus far described were, with few exceptions, 
students who were seeking help for use in teaching. 
Most of them had taught, were about to teach again the 
next autumn, and were spending their vacation at the 
feet of advertised masters. The significance of this fact 
is accentuated when we remember that ''teachers teach 
as they are taught not as they are told to teach." 

Besides courses in subject matter for teachers there 
were twenty-two courses in how to teach different sub- 
jects like history, mathematics, literature, composition, 
public speaking, training the atypical, etc. One natur- 
ally expected the highest type of personality and of 
teaching in these courses on how to teach, work which 
would illustrate most clearly and forcefully those methods 
and precepts which would be described to teacher-stu- 
dents. Unfortunately, the observations did not justify 
such expectations. Of twenty-two teachers of teaching 
only three were in the first class exhibited at this same 
institution ; five were of high grade personality ; six were 
mediocre ; and eight because of defective personality and 
technique were doing seemingly futile or ineffective work. 

Personality elements that can never in fairness to de- 
mocracy's education be set to teaching teachers were 
prominently exposed such as : affectation, flippancy, su- 
perficiality, carelessness, procrastination, inertness, slav- 
ish devotion to mechanical routine, lack of openminded- 
ness, coldness and formality of manner, pretense, stupid- 
ity, diffusiveness, laxity and tediousness. 



Of twenty-two instructors whose only advertised pur- 
pose was to teach others how to teach, seven were 



70 PERSONALITYCULTURB 

extremely careless and indolent. They came to class al- 
most wholly unprepared. They had not sharpened their 
impressions of the subject, or reviewed their material 
before coming to class, but relied on old smooth worn 
impressions and knowledge gained years ago. 

Teacher Personality No. 21 — Type 5 

One example of this fault was the teacher who was 
giving the course in the "Teaching of Literature", men- 
tioned on page 44. The class consisted of seventy 
students, most of whom appeared to be teachers of con- 
siderable experience. 

The teacher commenced talking about the "Merchant 
of Venice." He propounded and answered several ques- 
tions in regard to it: 

1 — "Who is the hero of the play, Antonio or Shylock? 
Probably Shylock, for no> actor stars as Antonio 
or Bassanio." 
2 — "Is the play a comedy or a tragedy? Did Shake- 
speare intend it as either, or did his play get away 
from him? Probably the latter was the case." 
3 — "When does the play become serious, cease being 
comic, and enter the realm of the tragic? When 
Jessica elopes." 
A — "How serious is Shylock's intention to exact the pound 
of flesh— that is, why did he exact the bond or loan 
the money? Probably for two reasons, first, to humble 
Antonio, and shut his mouth, and second, to harass 
him. These less tragic reasons are crystallized into 
an avowed revenge when Jessica elopes." 
5 — "What of the character of Bassanio? Teachers must 
not let high school pupils become enamoured of Bas- 
sanio. He is a great calf." The students laughed. 
"But one should not be too harsh with Bassanio 
either." 
6 — "How far shall the plot be studied? Not deeply — 
just indicate the four plots and see how they are con- 
nected." 



PERSONALITY AND TEACHER TRAINING 71 

During the first part of the hour he was at ease and 
held the attention of the class admirably. He appeared 
to have a fairly fresh and intimate acquaintance with 
the play. But when he tried to quote passages illus- 
trative of his points, he failed lamentably. He did not 
have his text at hand to read the passages to the class, 
hence was unable to quote. 

The latter part of the hour was spent in discussing 
Milton. Here he made less headway for his grasp on 
the matter was poor and his presentation lacked clear- 
ness and grasp of details. He had forgotten to bring his 
copy of Milton, he said, and would have to rely upon 
his memory. But his memory played him false. He 
mentioned the poems of Milton that should be read in 
class, — "L'Allegro", "II Penseroso", the sonnet on 
"Blindness", and the first book of "Paradise Lost". 
He had purposely left out "Comus", he said, since that 
was rather unsatisfactory for high school pupils. 

"What shall we look for in Milton?" he continued. 
"First, the beauty of the cadence of sound. This should 
be brought out by good oral reading. The teacher her- 
self would be able to do this. Little is accomplished by 
poor oral reading. Don't let poor readers spoil Milton. 
You must not develop reading at the expense of Milton." 

At this point he tried to quote Milton's sonnet on 
"Blindness" as illustrative of his point, but he could 
scarcely stumble through it. Then he spoke of the grand- 
eur of Milton's verse, its uplift and biblical elevation, 
but gave no concrete examples. 

He was an experienced teacher, well versed in his sub- 
ject, but had neglected to prepare himself adequately for 
his class. He had not only neglected to refresh his mem- 
ory but had forgotten to bring to class copies of the works 
to which he was referring. It is small wonder that 
students resort to bluffing and deception. 

There were five examples of colorless and inert per- 
sonalities wholly controlled by old fixed habits of thought. 
The recitations consisted mostly of fact questions and 






72 PERSONALITYCULTURB 

answers. Very few questions called for anything but 
sheer memory processes. Judgment, reasoning, compar- 
ison, and contrast, induction and deduction were in these 
classes as superfluous as a third thumb. 

Teacher Personality Not 40 — Type 8 

The teacher was giving a course called the ''Influence 
of Geography on American History." It was an oral quiz 
of the first week's work, so that the visitor had an oppor- 
tunity to discover the nature of the subject matter cov- 
ered. The teacher was a young man of perhaps thirty- 
five years, medium stature and of slight frame. He 
lacked animation and force. His nature was cold and 
impassive. 

Although his questions called for knowledge of the 
most elementary character, the teacher-students halted 
at answering them. It was as though they possessed 
merely a collection of hard, angular fragments of facts 
and had difficulty in picking out those which would have 
any relation to the question. The teacher's attitude was 
shifty and wheedling. He tried to coax out the answers 
by a leechlike process, but the difficulty was that he 
applied his process to undigested, inorganic masses in- 
stead of assimilated, organic material. What he needed 
was some sort of a magnet to pick up the bits of infor- 
mation he had scattered in the minds of his students. 

Here again was a teacher syphoning a vacuum. "What 
else?" "What more?" were constantly in use during the 
whole of the hour. The recitation was a series of me- 
chanical shocks and jolts on the memories of the students 
to start a train of thought. 

The following represents a portion of the recitation : 

T. Why did Europe seek the tropical products of the 
Orient? 

S. They sought mostly luxuries. 

T. (The teacher called on another student.) 

S. The difference of the products of the two coun- 
tries explained it. Their mineral products differed 



PERSONALITY AND TEACHER TRAINING 73 

to a considerable degree. The Crusades increased 
Europe's desire to know the Orient; to know the 
scientific advancement of agriculture. 
T. How about the civilization of the Orient? 
S. Civilization in the Orient was much more ad- 
vanced. 
T. What factors made the contact with the Orient 

quite easy? 
S. All the water routes. 
T. Was it all water? 
S. No, there was the Isthmus of Suez, but it was 

cheaper by water. 
T. What other geographical factors made water more 

desirable? 
S. The winds and monsoons that were encountered on 

the land routes. 
The recitation progressed in the above manner during 
the whole hour. 

The elementary character of the subject matter, the 
formality and mere fact-vending character of the course, 
the poor grasp that the students had on the subject be- 
tokened two things : first, the students had in previous 
courses and teaching experience either never learned or 
had completely forgotten these things both as students 
and as teachers ; second, even in the present course, the 
simple subject matter had not been mastered. 

The last fault must be laid at the door of the univer- 
sity teacher, and a five minutes' visit to the class would 
have revealed the reason. The trouble was threefold : 
first, the man had not mastered the technique of teaching . 
second, he had a very poor grasp on his subject matter; 
the third, his personality was weak, colorless and inef- 
fective. He had only twelve persons in the class, each 
one of whom should have been able to give the gist of 
the whole hour's recitation in eight or ten minutes. In- 
stead, an hour was needed to extract it piecemeal from the 
students. 

Five out of the twenty-two teacher trainers made ab- 
solutely no attempt in the sessions visited to capitalize 



74 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

the students' experiences, three others made but very- 
little, and only four made the most of this potential bene- 
fit. 



Teacher Personality No. 1 — Type 9 

An example of this fault was the class in "Modern 
English Grammar" for teachers and prospective teach- 
ers, described on page 11. The class was visited on 
the first day of the summer session and was again visited 
the day before the final examination. The teacher was 
still talking in his halting fashion, still stumbling over his 
"uhs", and laughing at the vision of approaching jokes 
which never materialized. He was now talking to a class 
whose thoughts had been beaten as flat and hard by six 
weeks of crushing tedium as a macadam road packed by 
a steam roller. 

"Punctuation is taught too mechanically, it should be 
taught from the analysis of sentences," the teacher com- 
menced. "Turn to page 31, to the classification of 
sentences. The usual definition of a simple sentence is 
that it represents a single thought. But the word 
'thought' is definite. A simple thought does not need to 
be expressed in a simple sentence without modifiers. A 
simple thought needs one subject and one predicate and 
may contain a number of modifiers." 

As he proceeded he would read certain illustrative sen- 
tences which the author had given and criticize these. 
For example, the text contained this sentence : The letter 
of introduction containing no matter of business was 
speedily run through. 

"The author wants you to say that the phrase 'con- 
taining no matter of business' is an adverbial phrase, 
because it gives the reason why the letter was speedily 
run through. But we must be careful to distinguish be- 
tween the grammatical relation and call it an adjective 
phrase," was the teacher's comment. 

He rambled along in this manner for some time. Fi- 
nally a vague feeling of the inadvisability of further 



PERSONALITY AND TEACHER TRAINING 75 

diffuseness must have arisen in his consciousness for he 
said that there are some things in grammar we can take 
for granted. He cited a young lawyer in a case before 
the State Supreme Court, who persisted in going into 
the most exhaustive details upon every conceivable point 
of law when presenting his case. The judge, all out of 
patience, said finally : "There are a few things in law that 
you may take for granted the Supreme Court knows." 

The teacher seemed utterly unconscious of the beau- 
tiful irony of his story. His whole six weeks' course 
like the young lawyer's presentation had been largely 
a tedious exposition of the obvious. 

For fifty minutes the teacher continued his tortoise- 
like progress, carefully examining every inch of his way. 
During the time no student said a single word. Not once 
did the teacher address a question to these teacher-stu- 
dents. They maintained the impassiveness of bronze 
statues. Here were thirty experienced teachers, who had 
probably taught grammar for years, treated like so many 
empty vessels to be filled up by a stream of words. It 
would not have been so bad if the talk had been interest- 
ing, but it was intolerably dry, diffuse and trite. It 
would require the genius of a Burbank to produce ideas 
of any kind in this intellectual desert. 

An atmosphere of formality and constraint pervaded 
ten or about one-half of the twenty-two teacher training 
classes. Teacher and class seemed utter strangers to 
each other and each appeared suspicious of the other. 
Here was lacking that spirit of give and take which 
characterized the classes of skillful teachers. The teach- 
er did all the talking, and students remained silent and 
stolid, like a group of brow-beaten prisoners. 

Teacher Personality No. 42 — Type 6 

A particularly flagrant example of this fault was in a 
large class of seventy students in the "Teaching of His- 



76 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

tory". When the visitor entered the room, the teacher 
was writing- the outline of his lecture on the blackboard. 
This occupied a few minutes after the gong sounded. 
The teacher was a man somewhat past middle age, with 
gray hair and moustache. He was tall and squarely set, 
and wore a gray suit. 

"It would not be much amiss to wish you the top of 
the morning," he remarked in a constrained, formal tone 
of voice. One noticed immediately a stiffness and cold- 
ness of manner, of diction and voice. His movements 
were angular and mechanical. His greeting did not a- 
rouse much interest. He turned and pointed to the 
blackboard on which he had written his outline, and pro- 
ceeded to lecture about reasons for teaching history, con- 
sidering in turn the following topics : 

1 — The recentness of teaching history. 

2 — Distinction between reading and study of history. 

3 — Informational values. 

4 — Intellectual values. 

5 — Ethical values. 

6 — Training of powers of expression. 

The lecture lasted forty-two minutes. At the end of 
this time, the teacher remarked that the class was open 
for discussion on the part of the students. After much 
prodding, two students ventured a few comments, and 
the teacher had to fill in the other six minutes with his 
own remarks. 

During the whole hour, the class had maintained the 
attitude of a man who resigns himself to listen to un- 
welcome advice from a dictating superior, but takes his 
revenge in assuming an expression of deliberate and 
pointed indifference. The atmosphere was one of frigid 
hostility. And the reason for it all was the formality and 
stiffness of the teacher's personality. The "front" of 
his personality was an impenetrable, forbidding wall 
through which nothing entered from nor emerged to the 
outside world. An assemblage of mummies would have 
served the purpose equally as well as these students. 



PERSONALITY AND TEACHER TRAINING 77 

Personality concerns colleges only so far as it produces 
results. There are personalities that seem to violate prac- 
tically every standard but nevertheless produce excellent 
results. At the end of a summer session, however, re- 
sults should be apparent. In class after class there was 
tangible evidence that students had not benefitted in 
proportion either to the university's obligation to help 
them or to their own capacity. Deficient teacher person- 
ality multiplied by deficient teaching technique was the 
chief explanation. 

Teaching Personality No 44 — Type 7 

It was a course in "Public Speaking", which was in- 
tended to give the students training in speaking grace- 
fully and convincingly before large audiences. The class 
consisted of twenty-one students, ten of them women. 
This class was visited the fifth week of the summer ses- 
sion, so that if any definite results were to' be forthcoming, 
they should have been apparent at the time. 

The teacher was a young, dark haired man who car- 
ried himself with a military stiffness. His gestures were 
jerky and mechanical. He spoke distinctly but with the 
monotonous intonation of a deaf man who has been 
taught to speak by the lip reading method. 

The teacher spent the first twelve minutes of the hour 
in directing the class how to make an outline of a little 
speech which they were to write, a proceeding which 
should have been unnecessary at this stage of the course. 
The remainder of the hour was devoted to the recita- 
tion of short selections by members of the class. Of 
the fourteen students who were called upon, no one spoke 
with any degree of force or animation, or possessed any 
ease of manner. 

One young lady had not quite mastered even the 
words, much less the art of delivering her little speech. 
She stumbled along painfully and stopped four or five 
times during her three minute speech. One large, fat 
fellow stood up as stark and stiff as a corpse and recited 



78 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

his piece in a thin, bland voice, which might have been 
an asset to a young lady, but which was ludicrous emerg- 
ing from him. One girl gave a selection containing a 
number of Spanish names over which she rattled with a 
superb unconcern for accuracy and intoned her phrases 
as though she were reciting a lullaby. Another co-ed 
dashed breathlessly through her sketch as though it 
were a hundred-yard-dash. The women were the most 
inept in their efforts. The last young lady tripped gaily 
through great rhetorical phrases as though she were 
gossiping about a dance at an afternoon tea. The last 
man to speak, however, despite the fact that he forgot 
and repeated, was really vigorous and convincing. 

Some of the selections were patriotic and contained 
bronze-throated phrases that should have stirred the 
pulse to quickened action. Patrick Henry's clarion calls 
— "Shall Freedom be purchased by chains?" and "Give 
me liberty or give me death !" were reduced to trivial- 
ities. Apparently these phrases had not struck a single 
responding chord in the hearts of the students, had not 
kindled a spark of the emotion which had given the 
words birth. One could have excused extravagance, but 
this apathy was unendurable. 

Towards the end of the recitation, the instructor asked 
how many wanted to speak before a large audience the 
next week which was to include all classes taking 
"Public Speaking." Only five students evinced enough 
interest to ask about it in greater detail and of these two 
half-heartedly expressed an intention of attempting it. 
This incident exemplified the listlessness of the teacher, 
the apathy of the students and the futility of the whole 
course. 



The fact that the faults listed in this chapter were 
noted in many of the other fifty teachers considered in 
this study does not mitigate the seriousness of exposing 
teachers to such deficient teaching and such inadequate 
personalities. 

What can be the final result of such a condition of 



PERSONALITY AND TEACHER TRAINING 79 

affairs upon the teaching ideals and habits of those 
teachers who sit in such classes day by day? The an- 
swer is obvious. All these teachers are subject to the 
law that a teacher teaches as she is taught. Mastery of 
subject matter does not dismiss objectionable models. 
The teacher imitates the tones, the gestures, the attitude 
of mind, and the methods of her own teacher. What more 
natural than that to a considerable extent teachers in 
training should consciously as well as unconciously imi- 
tate the personalities they encounter and endure in col- 
leges of education? 

Some of the teachers of splendid personality and mark- 
ed ability, just fell short of excellence by their failure to 
enlist the cooperation of their classes through student 
self-activity, without which class attendance is almost 
productless. A little self analysis and self criticism after 
the fault has been pointed out to these men would easily 
remedy this fault. 

The ill effects of bad models, of vicious examples of 
teaching in colleges of education are not confined merely 
to secondary schools, but are visible within the confines 
of the universities themselves. In very few cases are 
there any provisions made for the pedagogical training 
of young men who are preparing to teach in colleges. 
Many normal schools produce teachers for elementary 
schools who really can teach. The college and univer- 
sities can do the same if they will train college teachers 
in the same thorough-going manner. When university 
authorities will permit only real teachers of strong per- 
sonality to train other teachers, then can grade and sec- 
ondary teachers come to the university as to a truly in- 
spiring, a quickening and rejuvenating Mecca. 



80 



PERSONALITYCULTURB 



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CHAPTER VI 
TEACHER PERSONALITY CLASSIFIED 

Classification of the personality of elementary and high 
school teachers has been projected as an indispensable 
science and art by several university teachers. Several 
score cards have been devised, taught and marketed as 
aids to school boards and superintendents in selecting, 
training and promoting classroom teachers. Moreover 
superintendents, as in Kansas City, Mo., and Evans- 
ville, Ind., Republic and Bay City, Mich., have with the 
aid of teachers themselves worked out classifications, 
elaborate and simple. The most comprehensive scheme 
yet developed was built up cooperatively by teachers, 
principals and superintendent in Evanston, 111. — and 
later abandoned for non-educational reasons ! The ac- 
companying personality chart has already been widely 
used for and by teachers in public schools. 

Higher education, however, including normal schools, 
has been slow to admit that what's sauce for the goose 
is sauce for the gander. Perhaps university faculties 
have not yet found time to try their own medicine. Per- 
haps they have been too busy diagnosing the personality 
ills of lower education to diagnose their own personality 
needs. 

It may be easier for college teachers to develop a 
classification that has been built from personality factors 
observed among seventy-two university teachers at work, 
than to accept one spun from the wisest introspection. 
The following classifications and comparisons are sub- 
mitted for their possible helpfulness to those analysts of 
higher education who see the need for workable classifi- 
cations of professorial personality and for systematic 



82 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

personality culture for and by college teachers. 

Modern educators agree that the college teacher should 
aim to produce advantageous modifications of the intel- 
lectual, emotional and volitional life of the students. 
From the teachers' success in educating the minds, 
hearts, and wills of their students we shall be able to 
gauge the relative degree of their teaching power. Any 
classification of teacher personality should consider sep- 
arately the intellectual, volitional and emotional factors. 

The ability to produce what Cardinal Newman terms 
an "enlargement of the mind or illumination," what we 
shall term candle power of intellectual illumination, is, 
at present, what most colleges expect first and foremost 
of all teachers. But we have outrun Cardinal Newman's 
contention that "the business of a university is to employ 
itself in the education of the intellect." Modern educa- 
tors consider this too narrow an idea of the university's 
function. Even if we agreed unreservedly to Newman's 
statement, we would still contend that the best way to 
educate the intellect is not to attempt to train the intel- 
lect alone. For the human mind is a complex living 
whole from which no one theoretically defined faculty or 
activity can be abstracted or segregated for any isolated 
treatment. Sensations, feelings, emotions, concepts, 
mental imagery, desires, motor impulses and acts of 
the will are all inextricably inter-related components of 
any conscious state. If one faculty is influenced so are 
other closely related faculties influenced. 

"But man is not all intellect," as John Tyndall writes 
from his personal experience. "If he were so, science 
would, I believe, be his proper nutriment. But he feels 
as well as he thinks ; he is receptive of the sublime and 
the beautiful as well as the true. Indeed, I believe that 
even the intellectual action of complete man, is, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, sustained by an under-current 
of the emotions. It is vain, I think, to attempt to separ- 
ate moral and emotional nature from intellectual nature. 
Let a man but observe himself, and he will, if I mistake 
not, find that in nine cases out of ten, moral or immoral 
considerations, as the case may be, are the motive force 



TEACHER PERSONALITY CLASSIFIED 83 

which pushes his intellect into action. The reading of 
the works of two men, neither of them imbued with the 
spirit of modern science, neither of them, indeed, friend- 
ly to that spirit has placed me here today. These men 
are the English Carlyle and the American Emerson. I 
must ever remember with gratitude that through three 
long, cold German winters Carlyle placed me in my tub, 
even when ice was on its surface, at five o'clock every 
morning; not slavishly, but cheerfully, meeting each day's 
studies with a resolute will, determined whether victor 
or vanquished not to shrink from difficulty." 

The fullest development of the intellect depends upon 
enlisting the powerful support of the emotions and the 
will, but it must not be forgotten that emotional and 
volitional powers are more than a means contributing to 
this end. They are also ends in themselves. Man is a 
feeling and acting being, and not merely a thinking ma- 
chine. Intellection or contemplation is not the sole end 
of life; it is a means as well as an end. Intellect gives 
direction, volition furnishes the motive powers, and the 
emotions give tone and value to the whole process. 
Without the feelings and emotions, human beings would 
be machines, propelled by the will and directed by the 
intellect, and would derive no satisfaction or flavor 
from life. To insure a complete and satisfying life, 
there must be a harmonious development of intellect, 
emotions and will. College teaching and training aim to 
facilitate this threefold development of "college bred men 
and women." 

In order to classify the teacher personality of the var- 
ious instructors, it was thought best to find some living 
standard and then place each teacher in comparison with 
this living standard. All ratings were on a scale of one 
hundred percent, the standard for a scale that would not 
be used if we were trying to interest individual instructors 
in next steps in personality culture, but which serves our 
present purpose of illustration and suggestion. The stan- 
dard for comparison was some one or four of the seventy- 
two instructors who possessed in the highest degree the 
qualities for producing desired changes in the intellec- 



84 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

tual, emotional and volitional life of students. Such a 
man, or such men, — and there were four of them — were 
said to be one hundred per cent in grade. The three pow- 
ers were nicknamed candle power (C.P.), kilowatts (K. 
W.) and British thermal units (B. T. U.). 

No instrument or scheme has ever been invented to 
measure a teacher's power of intellectual illumination. 
The solution of the problem was to take some man who 
possessed this power of illumination in the highest de- 
gree as the standard and compare all others with him. 
Such a man was said to possess 100 candle power, (C.P.). 
(It is not, of course, contended that one candle power 
represented any definite invariable unit.) The degree 
of intellectual illumination of each other teacher was es- 
timated relative to the highest standard observed. 

In forming an estimate of a teacher's powers of intel- 
lectual illumination, the following tangible factors were 
considered : the proportion of matter occurring in the 
lesson which was left obscure or doubtful ; the absence 
of material that would have increased clarity; the a- 
mount of time consumed in clearing up a topic ; the 
proportion of diffuseness ; the kind and quality of the 
illustrations, figures of speech, and style and diction ; the 
presence of irrelevant matter; the use of illustrative 
devices, slides, diagrams, etc. ; the organization of the 
lecture or recitation; and the value of the subject mat- 
ter. Then, in addition to this the various intellectual 
qualities of personality, profundity, visio'n associative- 
ness, alertness, wit, originality, etc., were considered. 

The same difficulty, of course, cropped out in the es- 
tablishing of some standard for emotional heat. The 
same solution offered itself. The highest degree of pow- 
er for quickening emotions evinced by one of the seventy- 
two teachers was taken as the standard. The man pos- 
sessing this was said to have 100 British thermal units 
(B. T. U.'s) of emotional heat. Again, it was a question 
of relativity, of comparison of the other teachers with 
this man, and determining the ratio on the scale of 100. 

Determining the presence of emotion and the degree 
of its intensity might at first thought appear a hopeless 



TEACHER PERSONALITY CLASSIFIED 85 

task. But it is relatively simple. The fixed gaze and 
tense position of the student indicates an absorbed in- 
terest, while luminous eyes, smiles, the hush of suspense, 
or th^ ripplings of laughter betray the presence and 
flux of emotions. The tangible results of emotional pow- 
er will usually be discernible within the four walls of 
the class room. The spark of emotional life is seldom 
placed unnoticed in the breasts of the students, to flare 
up at some later time. The teacher who can not quicken 
the emotions of his students when standing before them 
with the magnet of his personality exerting its power at 
close range, can not safely count upon moving them 
outside the classroom beyond the spell of the magnetic 
field. 

The great, unfailing source of emotional power is en- 
thusiasm. Enthusiasm is the welding, fusing power that 
molds human nature as a trip hammer fashions steel. 
A fine, deep, driving enthusiasm on the part of a teacher 
is an invaluable and powerful asset. 

One aspect of the emotional nature which the ablest 
teachers emphasized was the refining and sharpening of 
the sensibilities, the developing of a fine sense of the value 
of things ; of words, of ideas, of the fine arts, of nature ; of 
conversation and of the rarer aspects of human nature 
and human relationships. 

Then the third power that the ablest teachers possessed 
and exercised is the power of arousing the students to 
independent effort and self activity. The term kilowatt 
(K. W.) of volitional energy has been used to denote 
this power and the four teachers evincing this power in 
the highest degree were said to possess 100 K. W. of 
volitional energy. There is possibly a discrepancy be- 
tween the magnitude of this and the other units, but this 
discrepancy may serve to accentuate the great importance 
of this essential factor in the work of a teacher. The 
dilettante, the procrastinator, and the ne'er-do-well are 
those who suffer from an atrophy of the will. To ener- 
gize the will, to swing the whole human planet into 
sweeping momentum is the supreme task of the teacher. 

The development of the students' volitional power by 



86 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

the teachers visited was often ignored. For example, 
assignments of lessons were often hasty and faulty; 
many had no definite standards of acquisition; devices 
for checking up the student's progress were usually 
inadequate. In many cases this laxity and these slovenly 
methods resulted directly from weaknesses in the charac- 
ter of the teachers, such as indolence or procrastination. 
Dignity, poise, resoluteness, force, independence, sin- 
cerity, these vigorous, dynamic qualities that are marks 
of rugged moral health, were too often missing in the 
characters of the teachers. 

The educational world has been convinced of the folly 
of upholding interest as the sole stimulus for the ac- 
quisition of knowledge and the development of the pupil, 
and is demanding the antidote of discipline. The pupils 
must be taught to exert their own intellectual muscles, 
and should acquire a zeal for the conquest of intellectual 
worlds. Despite this crying demand for a regime of dis- 
cipline, tempered by an appreciation of the laws of in- 
terest, educational leaders are finding in schools of all 
kinds, mental and moral flabbiness on the part of teach- 
ers and students alike. 

As a kind of regulator a balancing device for check- 
ing undue exaggeration of one of the above three factors 
and for indicating the presence of extraneous, ungov- 
ernable conditions was added to the three above men- 
tioned. This regulator was class interest which was term- 
ed class temperature (C. T.). The highest degree of class 
interest observed was taken as the standard, and the 
other classes graded on a scale of 100 per cent. Condi- 
tions over which the teachers had no control, such as 
the nature of the subject matter, the novelty and modern- 
ity of a subject like sociology; the inherent dryness of a 
course like grammar, the rigorous demands of a course 
like mathematics ; the preparation and intelligence of the 
students and certain erratic, unusual qualities of person- 
ality, were often powerful determinants of class interest. 
These erratic conditions with their extreme complexity 
and disconcerting capacity for producing irregularity had 
to be considered, and yet, however intractable these fac- 



TEACHER PERSONALITY CLASSIFIED 87 

tors proved themselves, the attempt was made to give 
them due recognition and weight. 

The value of the proposed classification depends in no 
sense upon its fairness to the seventy-two university in- 
structors observed. Concede for sake of shifting the 
light from the writer to the reader that not one of the 
instructors was half appreciated. The question is, 
would it help students and faculties alike if some such 
classification were to be generally employed in selecting, 
promoting and developing higher education's teachers? 

Again, concede that too many or too few qualities are 
here discussed, and with wrong emphasis. The question 
is, should higher education engage itself in seeking and 
using the most helpful classifications? 



For Questions or Notes by Readers 



88 PERSONALITYCULTURE 



For Questions or Notes by Readers 



CHAPTER VII 
CANDLE POWER OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 

At present universities and colleges frankly confine 
their official efforts almost wholly to training the intel- 
lect. A careful analysis and a tentative evaluation of the 
intellectual qualities of the seventy-two teachers may 
yield interesting results. If the teachers themselves do 
not possess power of intellectual illumination and cannot 
stimulate or develop intellectual power in their students 
then there is small excuse for their presence in the class 
rooms. This chapter will consider their candle power of 
intellectual illumination. 

The intellectual qualities have been divided into four 
groups : 

1 — Qualities describing, as one might say, the capacity 
of the intellect and its acquisitive powers. 

2 — Qualities having to do with the organization of 
ideas and knowledge. 

3 — Qualities concerning the dynamic and inspiration- 
al activities of the intellect. 

A — Qualities which represent the intellect's embel- 
lishments. 

I. Capacity and Acquisition 

In the first group have been included the qualities of 
scholarship, erudition, generalization, grasp of facts, pro- 
fundity, comprehensiveness, retentivity, insight, associa- 
tiveness, analytic power, open-mindedness and tentacu- 
lar power. 

These represent the qualities which make possible the 
attainments and denote the content of the intellect. 



90 PBRSONALITYCULTURB 

The desirability of the teacher possessing the above 
qualities is self evident. The tables at the end of this and 
succeeding sections will show roughly in what degree 
these qualities or their opposites were discovered or 
found lacking. It is the ever-present duty of the teacher 
to attempt to develop all these desirable qualities not 
only in his own personality but also in that of his stu- 
dents to the maximum of the latter's capacity to grow 
while in college. 

Insight into human character is, of course, an essential 
quality of any personality which purports to influence 
others. It is especially valuable for the teacher, for he 
will teach, modify and improve only what he understands. 
Teachers should have the power to enter imaginatively 
into the lives, the ambitions, interests and problems of 
their students. They should mix with the students, 
study their life and personality and capitalize this infor- 
mation in their work. 

Associativeness is a great asset to any mind. A 
teacher with great powers of association can see the 
unusual resemblances or incongruities of things and can 
combine apparently unrelated impressions. 

Power to analyze is absolutely essential to all teachers 
because they must break up bodies of knowledge into 
their smaller components, so that the less mature minds 
of their students will be able to digest and absorb it bit 
by bit. Lack of adequate analytical power is very fre- 
quently the cause of a teacher's failure. 

Open-mindedness, a willingness to see the other per- 
son's point of view, will work wonders in the matter of 
enlisting student sympathy and co-operation. Further- 
more, it is a sign of educability and capacity for future 
growth. Great minds are always open-minded, eager 
to receive new impressions. 

The following tables represent the summary of a de- 
tailed analysis of the degrees in which the various in- 
tellectual qualities appear in the personalities of the sev- 
enty-two university teachers studied. In Table No. 1, 
the numeral value of "Scholarship" represents the total 
of the values assigned to each of the seventy-two teachers 



CANDLE POWER OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 



91 



for that particular quality. Five degrees of each quality 
were distinguished, "none" given a value of 0, "slight" 
given value 1, "medium" 2, "great" 3, and "extraordin- 
ary" 4. Similarly negative qualities were given values. 
Thus for seventy-two instructors credits for scholar- 
ship total 137. The maximum score obtainable for the 
whole group was 72 x 4 or 288. The highest score in 
this group of qualities is 199 for grasp of facts, which is 
70 c /o of the obtainable score. The group of seventy-two 
instructors might have totaled 288 in each of twelve 
traits or 3456; they did total 1376 positive scores or less 
than 40%. Were the negative total of 337 subtracted 
the net score would be about 30%. 



Table No. 1 

INTELLECTUAL QUALITIES 
CAPACITY AND ACQUISITION 



Possible total, each point, 288 



Possible total, 



No 


Desirables Value No 


Undesirables 


Value 


1 


Scholarship 


137 


1 


Abstractness 


58 


2 
3 


Erudition 
Generalization 


28 
83 


2 
3 


Superficialty 18 
Narrow-mindedness 76 


4 
5 
6 
7 
8 
9 


Grasp of facts 199 
Profundity 83 
iComprehensiveness 98 
Retentivity-recall 161 
Insight 109 
Associativeness 119 


4 

5 


Forgetfulness 
Lack of insight 
obtuseness 


66 
119 


10 
11 


Analytical power 
Open-mindedness 


133 
124 








12 


Tentacular power 


138 










Total 


1412 




Total 


337 




Possible total, 












all points 


3456 




Net Total 


1075 



92 PERSONALITYCULTURB 

These group scores are ventured for their suggestive- 
ness, not for their infallibility. They are one layman's esti- 
mate based upon very incomplete acquaintance. It 
would be gravely unfair to award salary increases or 
prestige on the basis of such analysis. It would not be 
unfair, however, to start helping instructors by asking 
them to analyze themselves in this way, or to start 
helping college students by showing them how to chal- 
lenge by such analysis the teacher personalities offered 
them. 



II. Organizing Qualities 

The four qualities of organization that should be part 
and parcel of a teacher's mental makeup are balance, 
emphasis, logicality, and coherence. 

A well-balanced mind is one in which knowledge is 
viewed in its proper proportion and perspective. It re- 
cognizes justly the relative value of things. Certainly 
the university or college is not the place for anarchists, 
fanatics, faddists, neurotics, and psychopathic monoman- 
iacs. Twd of the teachers appeared seriously erratic. 

In the work of the ablest teachers observed the essen- 
tials of a subject were properly emphasized and the prin- 
ciple of relief observed. Their lectures or recitations re- 
sembled relief maps with the tall peaks and valleys all in- 
dicated. Important laws, principles and facts of a subject 
were stressed, so that the students had a few guide posts 
to point the way, and were not hopelessly mired in a 
slough of details. Balance and emphasis were, however, 
not necessarily noncomitant. Now and then a well balanc- 
ed mind would not stress things properly whereas a fan- 
atic seldom failed to. 

Logical minds saw the immutable relations of cause 
and effect. The minds without logicality were like jelly- 
fish, without a backbone, form or effectiveness. Illogi- 
cality is inexcusable in a teacher. 

Coherence exhibited itself by bringing out clearly the 
relation of one thing to another, marshalling facts and 



CANDLE POWER OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 93 

knowledge in the proper order. Some logical minds were 
unable to present things coherently, but coherent minds 
were necessarily logical. 

Table No. 2 

INTELLECTUAL QUALITIES 
II. ORGANIZATION 

Possible total, each point, 288 Possible total, 

No. Desirables Value No. Undesirables Value 

1 Balance 146 1 Warped-unbalanced 8 

2 Emphasis 105 2 Monotonous 89 

3 Logicality 151 3 Illogical 86 

4 Coherence-system 146 4 Incoherent 54 

Total 548 Total 237 

Possible total 

every point 1152 Net total 311 



The majority of the men appeared well balanced, were 
logical and coherent. However in the presentation of 
their subjects they neglected the principle of emphasis, 
a very important but easily corrected factor. In organ- 
izing qualities the group totaled 548 positive scores out 
of a possibile 1152, a negative score of 237 in four bad 
traits, a net score of 311 where 1152 was possible had all 
equalled the best. 

III. Dynamic and Inspirational Qualities 

Whereas the qualities implying capacity and ac- 
quisitive powers — excepting scholarship and erudition — 
and those descriptive of the powers of organization, are 
fundamental to any man of significance in any walk of 
life, they are not the qualities which are necessarily dis- 
tinctive of a teacher. A teacher covets most of these 
qualities as assets, but without the dynamic and inspira- 



94 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

tional qualities, he will never be a great teacher. With- 
out vision, imagination, clearness, associativeness, orig- 
inality, resourcefulness, ingenuity, alertness, illustrative- 
ness, incisiveness, and brilliance he remains at most only 
a scholar. A teacher must possess qualities which pro- 
duce the proper reactions on his students. 

Vision is possibly the greatest single asset of any 
mind. The teacher with vision utilized the experiences 
and knowledge of the past and painted a glorious, stim- 
ulating picture of the future. He pointed out to the 
students the value of what they had done, what they 
were doing, and enlarged on the possibilities of the fu- 
ture. And whatever subject he is dealing with, such a 
teacher will throw about it an irridescent aura which 
makes it interesting and wonderful. Four men possessed 
this in high degree. 

Originality is one of the fundamental qualities of gen- 
ius. Few of the teachers could be said to have any 
great originality. 

Resourcefulness may be useful to a teacher in answer- 
ing the students' questions, ingenuity in formulating new 
ways of presenting things and driving things home. Both 
are highly stimulating qualities. Several men appeared 
to be ingenious and resourceful. 

Alertness on the part of the teacher, the ability to 
rapidly and constantly focus his attention on each in- 
cident that comes up in class, is a quality that keeps 
the students on the qui vive. Many of the teachers were 
quite alert. 

Illustrativeness might be considered as a component 
of the quality of associativeness, but is so comprehen- 
sive and so essential in itself that it deserves independent 
mention. The ablest teachers had on the tongue's tip 
illustration after illustration to drive home a law or prin- 
ciple. This quality was a great aid in gaining clearness. 
Several others made good use of illustrations. 



CANDLE POWER OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 95 

Table No. 3 

INTELLECTUAL QUALITIES 
III. DYNAMIC AND INSPIRATIONAL 

Possible total, each point, 288 Possible total, 



No. Desirables 


Value 


No. Undesirables Value 


1 


Vision 


54 


1 


Short-sightedness 


75 


2 


Verve 


63 


2 


Lack of dash- 




3 


Imagination 


12 




inertness 


144 


4 


Clearness 


125 


3 


Obscurity 


90 


5 


Originality 


85 


4 


Triteness 


100 


6 


Resourcefulness 


126 


5 


Dependence 


84 


7 


Ingenuity 


66 


6 


Absent-mindedness 


84 


8 


Alertness 


137 








9 


Illustrativeness 


110 








10 


Incisiveness 


134 








11 


Brilliance 


68 










Total 


980 




Total 


577 




Possible total, 












every point 


3168 




Net total 


403 



The teachers scored very poorly in this important 
group of qualities, totaling 980 positive scores out of a 
possible 3168. Subtracting 577 negative scores we have 
a net score of 403 in 3168. 

They scored only fair in clearness, resourcefulness, 
alertness, illustrativeness and incisiveness, poor in vision, 
verve, originality, ingenuity and brilliance. One discov- 
ered only a few traces of the quality of imagination, 
which of course need not be apparent in each and every 
session. 

They also made a bad record in the positive undesir- 
able qualities of this group, particularly lack of dash, 
obscurity and triteness. The very poor showing made 
in this group of traits was a proof of that general lack of 
dynamic and inspirational qualities which characterizes 
all too many of the teachers' work. 



96 PERSONALITYCULTURB 

IV. Embellishing Qualities 

Some traits may be termed embellishments, adorn- 
ments that make for charm and grace of per- 
sonality. Such factors as wit, anecdotes remin- 
iscences, epigrams, paradoxes, figures of speech 
and whimsicality constitute the fragrance and the iri- 
descent hues of personality. These are qualities project- 
ed by the intellect, yet producing distinctly emotional 
effects. By inducing the proper frame of mind on the 
part of the students, they serve to lessen tedium and 
neutralize the wear and tear of the daily grind of school 
work. 

The dullness of too many classes was deplorable. The 
almost general absence of embellishing and adorning 
qualities explains to a considerable extent the tedious- 
ness and ennui of the majority of the class exercises. 
The success of a teacher's personality rests as essentially 
upon the presence of these qualities as does the success 
of personalities in any other walk of life. 

Table No. 4 

INTELLECTUAL QUALITIES 
IV. EMBELLISHMENTS 

Possible total, each point 288 Possible to tal 

No. Desirables Value No. Undesirables Va lue 

58 1 Dullness-lack of wit 124 



1 


Wit 


58 


2 


Anecdotes 


29 


3 


Reminiscence 


36 


4 


Epigrams 


20 


6 


Whimsicality 


52 


5 


Paradoxes 


12 


7 


Figures of speech 


65 



Total 272 Total 124 

Possible total, 

every point 2016 Net total, 148 



CHAPTER VIII 
B. T. ITS OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 

The picture of college breeding which colleges and 
universities paint is something like this : Students are 
taught to enjoy and appreciate the more elevated aspects 
of poetry, literature, sculpture, music, painting, drama, 
nature and conversation, and the finer, rarer qualities of 
personality. They are trained to see the beauty of hum- 
ble and common things, to appreciate the homelier and 
more substantial qualities of human nature as well. They 
are taught to dress well, to develop agreeable manners 
and charm of personality and to furnish homes and of- 
fices in good taste. Their voices, facial expressions, 
personal habits are refined, and their appreciation of 
these in others developed. Desire and capacity to enjoy 
the refining influences in life is one of the products of a 
true education. College men and women learn to live 
more fully, more richly, more deeply, to enjoy life to the 
full as the result of a college education. 

How can our colleges realize this ideal unless their 
instructors have developed the qualities the students 
should have? If James' theory of vibratory brain cells 
is true, that the profounder and more compelling power 
of emotions to produce vibration induces greater and 
more trenchant thoughts, then professors who are devoid 
of emotion and enthusiasm inflict untold injury on stu- 
dent mind. 

Emotional qualities are of three groups : 

I. Qualities of conduct and appearance, 
II. Basic emotions, 
III. Refining qualities. 
To help think of their purposes in life, distinct from 



98 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

those of intellectual qualities, they are likened to British 
thermal units. They are effective according to the heat 
units and ash they bear. 

I. Qualities of Conduct and Appearance 

Naturalness of manner, neatness, a pleasant 
voice, a pleasing facial expression, good diction, modesty, 
tact, and courtesy include 'the principal external and 
physical traits by means of which students decide al- 
most at first sight, whether or not they will like a 
teacher. Many students have not been trained and are 
not sufficiently mature to observe the more fundamental 
and subtle qualities of human nature, and judge almost 
wholly by externalities, "niceness" of appearance, and ex- 
pression and manners. Affectation and slovenliness of 
dress, expression or manner, egotism, tactlessness or 
rudeness, cannot fail to alienate the students' sympa- 

Table No. 5 

EMOTIONAL QUALITIES 
I. CONDUCT AND APPEARANCE 

Possible total, each point, 288 Possible total 



No. Desirables Value 


No. Undesirables 


Value 


1 Naturalness of manner 129 


1 Affectation 


14 


2 Neatness and taste 


141 


2 Slovenliness 


12 


3 Pleasant voice 


158 3 Conceit 


19 


4 Pleasant expression 


142 4 Rudeness 


3 


5 Good diction 


147 






6 Modesty 


139 






7 Tact 


132 






8 Courtesy 


132 






Total 


1120 


Total 


48 


Possible total, 








every point, 


2304 


Net total 


1072 



L ft 



B T ITS OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 99 

thies, and interfere with their progress and development. 
Most of the instructors made a good impression in an 
analysis of this group of qualities. A few of them were 
affected, slovenly and conceited; and one was extremely 
rude in the treatment of his students. Out of a possible 
2304 positive credits they scored 1120; subtracting 48 
undesirables, the net total is 1072. 

II. .Basic and Stimulating Emotions 

No one will deny the desirability of a teacher being vir- 
ile emotionally and generously equipped with the great 
basic human emotions, those qualities which constitute 
a sort of social cement and serve to bind us together into 
a SGcial unity. 

Address is one of the greatest assets of any personality. 
It is the outward manifestation of one's attitude toward 
one's fellow creatures, not always the true one, but usual- 
ly the one that is accepted at first meeting. Most people 
whom one meets have no other way of judging person- 
ality than by the manner in which they are treated on 
first meeting. A person of good address possesses a 
ready smile, a kindly smile, a nimble tongue and mind, 
a warm handclasp, an expression of sympathy and interest 
in everyone he meets. There is a suppleness, an ingen- 
uity, and a sympathetic insight that establishes an agree- 
able and penetrating contact with whomsoever such a 
person may meet. Such a person seems to gauge, to 
sympathize, to approve and be glad to meet another. A 
winning address should be and can be cultivated by 
every teacher. In fact, so striking is this quality when 
present in a remarkable degree, that students at first con- 
fuse this one quality with the whole of personality, and 
often exclaim upon first meeting a new instructor "What 
a wonderful personality he has!" often with a large 
measure of truth, for it is the touchstone of personality. 

Then there are the great fundamental qualities of 
sympathy, humor, enthusiasm, democracy, responsive- 
ness, good nature, tolerance and optimism which every 



100 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

college teacher can have and be able to stimulate stu- 
dents. Enthusiasm for the subject, if not for the student, 
is essential to success in teaching. Not all teachers appre- 
ciate as they should the tremendous importance of humor. 
A genial humor and a ready wit will offset the lack of 
many other desirable qualities and will arouse the inter- 
est and win the sympathy of the students as few other 
qualities. 

"How to infuse interest into their classwork should 
be ever prominent before the teachers' eyes," according 
to Julius Sacks, Teachers' College, Columbia University. 
"It has always seemed inconceivable why some of our 
teachers are inclined to sneer at interest as a vital force 
in teaching." How ability to arouse student interest 
manifests itself in classes visited has already been shown. 

Table No. 6 

EMOTIONAL QUALITIES 
II. BASIC EMOTIONS 

Possible total, each point, 288 Possible Total 



No. 


Desirables 


Value 


No. Undesirables Value 


1 


Address 


142 


1 


Furtive-shrinking 


34 


2 


Sympathy 


111 


2 


Sarcasm 


3 


3 


Humor 


62 


3 


Lack of humor 


50 


4 


Enthusiasm 


135 


4 


Coldness 


101 


5 


Democracy 


144 


5 


Snobbish-super- 




6 


Responsiveness 


108 




ciliousness 


28 


7 


Good nature 


138 


6 


Harshness 


2 


8 


Tolerance 


86 


7 


Domineering 


8 


9 


Optimism 


85 


8 


Tediousness-boring 


74 


10 


Eloquence 


38 








11 


Interest-gripping 


103 










Total 


1152 




Total 


300 




Possible total, 












every point, 


3168 




Net total 


852 



B T U'S OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 101 

Not one of these basic emotion-creating qualities can 
be properly dispensed with or slurred in college teaching. 

Where 3168 points were obtainable, there were 1152 
positive scores ; subtracting 300 undesirables we have 
852 or a little better than 25 per cent of the total which 
the group would have had if all had equalled the best. 
Most of the men were fairly good natured, but few gave 
evidence of active humor. Most appeared to be demo- 
cratic in their attitude. Optimism and eloquence existed 
only in a small degree and in few cases. Among a con- 
siderable number, those of the higher types of teachers, 
the qualities of address, sympathy, enthusiasm, respon- 
siveness and interest-gripping were present to a com- 
mendable degree. Tolerance could be gauged fairly only 
in the recitation classes, and here the quality appeared 
in the majority of cases. 

The personality deficits were present in a rather large 
proportion of cases and in considerable degree. Many 
of the men were diffident and shrinking in their manner, 
a much larger number were cold, unsympathetic and ted- 
ious, while others were dry and lacked humor. A num- 
ber of examples of snobbishness, intolerance and one of 
sarcasm were observed. 

Table No. 7 

EMOTIONAL QUALITIES 
III. REFINING QUALITIES 

Possible total, each point, 288 Possible total, 

No. Desirable s Value No. Undesirables Value 

1 Charm 102 1 Colorless ~43 

2 Sensitivity 82 2 Boorishness 6 

3 Aesthetic sense 35 3 Prosaic-matter of fact 78 

4 Sense of wonder of life 39 4 Cynicism 6 

Total 258 Total L33 



Possible total, 

every point, 1152 Net total 125 



102 PBRSONALITYCULTURE 

Of a possible 1152, the seventy-two instructors scored 
258 in positive refining qualities. But they also scored 
133 in negative undesirables, a net score of 125 or a 
little over 10 per cent. 

Little criticism would be made because of the lack 
of these qualities if the antithetical qualities of 
aggressiveness, decisiveness, fearlessness and exacting 
standards were present in a considerable degree, for the 
two kinds of qualities are not often discovered in the 
same personality. This is merely a further example of 
the sins of omission that are chargeable to teachers. 

Too many colorless personalities, and prosaic, dull 
minds, were noted. 

For Questions or Notes by Readers 



CHAPTER IX 
KILOWATTS OF TEACHER PERSONALITY 

Modern education has been accused by leading educa- 
tors of turning out graduates with invertebrate, jelly- 
fish wills. The charges run like this : "Students are 
cosseted and coddled, are entertained and amused all 
through their school life, so that when they emerge from 
college, they are like soft-shelled crabs, unfit for the rude 
shocks of the outside world. Students have not develop- 
ed the sterner traits of character, such as the more rugged 
volitional qualities, aggressiveness, application, resolute- 
ness and decisiveness." 

Writing in the Western Teacher, Mr. G. G. Acton 
declares : "Our schools are filling with a spry, deft, alert, 
attentive, nonintrospective generation of young people, 
who seem to be losing certain qualities of ruggedness 
that should distinguish a people. Our students are too 
willing to take a teacher's word for it. There seems to 
be too little of that fixity of purpose and independence 
of attitude that leads one to say even of an unschooled 
man that he has good stuff in him. As a body, our 
students ask few questions, they seldom challenge a 
classmate's statements, they are glad to be passed by in 
recitations to avoid interrogation. They like to bloom 
without being torn to pieces for analysis. They are not 
fond of knotty problems. There is little of that rejoicing 
in strength to run a scholarly race. I think parents 
make a mistake in not commending teachers more often 
for requiring students to work out questions for them- 
selves." 

Many believe that such charges are true and apply to 
the majority of the students of both high schools and 



104 PBRSONALITYCULTURB 

universities. But are not such statements an admission 
of defeat and ineffectiveness on the part of our educa- 
tional institutions rather than evidence of defect in stu- 
dent material? 

We have no right to reprove students for being what 
their teachers have made them or unnecessarily allowed 
them to remain. By the time a student reaches college 
or even high school, he is pretty much a product of the 
school system. Has the teacher no responsibility for the 
growth and development of the student's intellectual, 
emotional, and moral nature? If not, who then has? 
The school is expected to show results for its efforts. 
Our teachers admit that they are the moulders of stu- 
dent minds and characters. If a contractor builds a 
poor building we blame the contractor not the building. 
If a school system makes a contract to educate the child, 
and does not succeed, whom shall we blame, the teacher 
or the child? It is granted that the work of the teacher 
is infinitely more complex and difficult than any work 
of mechanical construction, but even so, the burden of 
proof clearly rests on the teacher's shoulders and not on 
the pupils. 

The fault is due largely to the fact that heretofore 
very few qualities of action have been required of the 
teacher as the price "of success in his field. Given a fair 
amount of persistence and power of application, a man 
may be said to possess the qualities of action necessary 
to make him a "success" in the scholarly world and even 
in the classroom. Some of the men rated lowest in this 
book enjoy enviable reputations for scholarship and 
others for popularity even with students. Wherever 
there exist no properly accepted method and no admin- 
istrative machinery for checking up adequately a teacher's 
results Avith his students in the classroom or the laboratory, 
and wherever reward comes for almost everything ex- 
cept excellence in teaching, teachers will fail to develop 
the rugged qualities of action, forcefulness, aggressive- 
ness, decisiveness, courage and independence, which are 
absolutely essential for success in the world of affairs. 
And yet, even though it is difficult to develop these qual- 



KILOWATTS OF TEACHING PERSONALITY 105 

ities within the walls of a college, the existence and the 
desirability of cultivating these sterner traits in the stu- 
dents should be recognized and given due emphasis. 
That it can be done several of the personality descrip- 
tions have shown. 



I. Qualities Stimulating to Action and Effort 

Too many teachers were not sufficiently rigid 
or exacting in their standards of attainments. 
They were too easy-going. Slovenly reports passed mus- 
ter, mumbled and garbled shreds of information were 
accepted as recitations, and examinations called merely 

Table No. 8 

VOLITIONAL QUALITIES 
I. STIMULATING TO ACTION AND EFFORT 

Possible total, each point, 288 Possible total 

No. Desirables Value No. Undesirables Value 

1 Exacting — rigid 78 1 Laxity 52 

2 Fearlessness — moral 2 Subservience (moral) 10 
courage 10 3 Timidity of judgment 36 

3 Aggressivness 92 4 Irresolution 16 

4 Independence of 5 Discouraging-re- 
judgment 34 pressive 47 

5 Decisiveness 34 

6 Encouraging 80 

7 Dynamic 102 

Total 430 Total ~ 161 



Possible total, 

every point, 2016 Net total 269 

for small samples of knowledge. Yet no other single 
quality wins the lasting respect of the students as that 
of a teacher's being exacting and rigid in standards of 



106 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

attainment. Other desirable qualities are fearlessness, — 
that is, moral courage, — aggressiveness, independence of 
judgment, and decisiveness. A teacher who is encourag- 
ing and dynamic will be able to stimulate his students to 
continuous and independent effort. 

Of a possible 2016 only 430 positive scores were made, 
with 161 negative scores, leaving a net total of but 269. 
Quite striking was the lack of definite and exacting 
standards of work. The teachers were much too lax and 
easy-going as to the results attained by the students. 
There was a lack of decisiveness and of independence of 
judgment. Subservience to authority and timidity of in- 
dependent judgment were flagrant. A large number were 
given rather poor grades for the qualities of aggressive- 
ness, encouragement and dynamic power. The quality 
of fearlessness could not be judged in most classroom 
observations. 



II. Qualities of Conduct and Appearance 

The qualities of dignity and reserve, poise, vi- 
tality and forceful speech are definite and essential assets 
to a teacher. The insistence upon mere physical vitality 
should not be carried to an extreme. It is usually true 
that a sound mind resides in a sound body, but it does 
not inevitably follow that a sound body houses a fine 
teaching personality. A special study was made of the 
relation of physique to teaching personality. Out of the 
twenty-seven of the best personalities, twenty-two were 
men of good physique, and five of poor physique. Out 
of the other forty-five less adequate personalities, twenty- 
seven were of good physique and eighteen of poor phy- 
sique; the twenty-seven of excellent physique were also 
of decidedly inferior teaching personality. Thus although 
a poor physique may mar irretrievably a fine personality, 
one must look carefully beyond mere physical appear- 
ance to determine whether a man has a good teaching 
personality. 

With few exceptions the teachers' personalities ex- 



KILOWATTS OF TEACHING PERSONALITY 107 

pressed dignity and reserve and poise ; in fact, some over- 
did it. There was noticeable a lack of physical vitality 
and forceful speech, although only a few examples of 
sickliness and nervousness were noticed. Every one of 
these qualities can be cultivated. 

Table No* 9 

VOLITIONAL QUALITIES 
II. CONDUCT AND APPEARANCE 

Possible total, each point, 28 Possible total, 

No. Desirables Value No. Undesirables Value 

1 Dignity — reserve 146 1 Undignified 9 

2 Poise 157 2 Nervous — erratic 14 

3 Physical vitality — 3 Sickly 15 
energy 109 

4 Forcefulness of 



speech 


115 






Total 


527 


Total 


38 


Possible total, 
every point, 


1152 


Net total, 


489 



III. Qualities Ethical in Effect 

Sincerity or integrity, industry, fairness and clean- 
mindedness are qualities essential in a teacher to win and 
hold the respect of the students. 

Of a total possible score of 1152 this group of sev- 
enty instructors were marked 542 in volitional qualities 
ethical in effect. Subtraction of 89 points was necessary 
for striking undesirable qualities producing unethical or 
antithetical effects, leaving a net total of 453 or 40 per 
cent of the possible score. Again it is repeated that 
these numerical expressions of an observer's impressions 
are not scientific determination, but an appeal for effort 



133 


1 Bluff — pretense 


28 


115 


2 Indolence 


38 


81 


3 Unfairness 


20 


213 


4 Salacious 


3 



108 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

on the part of higher education to successfully analyze 
and cultivate instructor personality. 

Table No. 10 

VOLITIONAL QUALITIES 
III. QUALITIES ETHICAL IN EFFECT 

Possible total, each point, 28 Possible total, 

No. Desirables Value No. Undesirables Value 

1 Sincerity — integrity 

2 Industry 

3 Fairness 

4 Clean mindedness 

Total 542 Total 89 

Possible total, 

every point, 1152 Net total, 453 



All but one of the men seemed clean-minded, most of 
the men appeared sincere, a lesser number very industri- 
ous. Some examples of bluff and four-flushing were 
noted, and some also of indolence. One striking example 
of lack of clean-mindedness was observed, later discov- 
ered to be a notorious and frequent offender. 

The benefits of positive volitional qualities and the in- 
juries of negative volitional qualities multiply inexorably 
for "teachers teach as they are taught." 

Deficiencies of personality will not so easily survive 
after higher education more generally substitutes direc- 
tion in work that needs to be done for lecturing and 
quizzing about book contents. 



CHAPTER X 
TEN GRADES OF TEACHING ABILITY 

Ten distinct grades of teachers were discovered in the 
process of analysis and classification. These will be de- 
fined and described in this chapter. 

This classification of seventy-two teachers may not 
serve as a pattern for anyone else to use without con- 
siderable alteration and development. However arbi- 
trary and subjective the actual grading of the individual 
teachers may appear, will the reader kindly remember 
that the definition and establishment of the various types 
did not start with judgment in the author's mind, but 
with qualities of personality and teaching method which 
were observed and analyzed? It is remarkable how 
quickly points of resemblance bring birds of a feather 
into a "type." A large number of salient qualities con- 
stitute the common denominator of each type despite 
the wide-spread impression that each human being is 
a unique individuality. Furthermore, once the various 
types have been defined, arranged in order of effective- 
ness and the teachers classified accordingly, it is easier 
than one thinks to arrange teachers within types ac- 
cording to their respective ability, and to assign to each 
factor of teaching ability a percentage range which will 
indicate relative excellence. Of course, the percentage 
grading of the various components may be legitimately 
criticized as being subjective and arbitrary, but this 
charge can be made of the grading of any imponderable 
quality that characterizes living organisms, whether it be 
judging flowers, wheat, pigs, dogs or horses. What, for 
example, is more subjective and arbitrary than the judg- 
ment of a tea taster, unless it is a conventional university 



110 PERSONALITYCULTURB 

grade of B + or 67 ? 

In any reasonable classification of teaching ability, the 
person who does the grading will arrive at his judgments 
by observation, not guess work. In every instance the au- 
thor has notes to support the grades given the various 
teachers. Furthermore, anyone else can easily by a de- 
tailed analysis of components of teaching ability study a 
number of teachers, classify them into groups and deter- 
mine their relative teaching ability. 

The point the author wishes to emphasize is that this 
classification of teachers is not the result of an arm-chair 
study, arrived at by consulting eminent authorities, but is 
the result of a field study of teachers observed in the act of 
actually teaching. The degree of teaching ability can nev- 
er be determined by looking up a teacher's previous record 
in college, by examining his Ph. D. thesis, reading the 
books and articles he has written or sampling his reputa- 
tion at the faculty club. It can only be determined by 
first-hand observation in a classroom where the teacher 
is caught redhanded in the act of teaching or by an ex- 
amination of his students. 

The summary on page 111 gives the number of teachers 
in each of ten groups and the limits of the percentage 
gradings of the various factors in each group i. e. C. P., 
B. T. U., K. W., and C. T. The ten types are explained 
with references to earlier personality protraits. 

First and Highest Type — 4 Teachers 

The four men included in the first group of teachers — 
Nos. 4, 8, 24, 31 — represent the very highest type of 
teacher observed. They were men of high intellectual 
endowments and untiring mental energy. All were men 
of rugged physique and commanding bearing. Their 
voices were clear and pleasingly resonant. In them 
splendid physical equipment and mental endowments 
were equally matched. 

In them seemed constellated a galaxy of teaching vir- 
tues. They possessed great retentive and associative 



TEN GRADES OF TEACHING ABILITY 



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112 PERSONALITYCULTURB 

powers; they struck one as being incisive and penetratr 
ing, alert and resourceful. They were sympathetic and 
open-minded; their wit was keen, yet sympathetic and 
pleasing and their humor inexhaustible. They had that 
animation, that infectious enthusiasm which is most es- 
sential to a really great teacher. 

Their character and personality were characterized 
by a glowing enthusiasm that kindled student interest 
and swung student energies into action. The students 
caught the spirit of their teachers. The students strain- 
ed forward in their seats, every eye riveted on the teach- 
er. For the teachers were not like actors, merely whip- 
ping up a sea of emotions, but were the inspiring leaders 
of an active working group. The students were intense- 
ly interested in their subjects, were working hard or 
eager to work hard and accomplish results, and enjoying 
the whole process. 



Type 2 — 4 Teachers 

The second type of teacher must not be thought of as 
falling very much below those of the first group as to 
physical and mental equipment. On the contrary, to a 
certain kind of student the teachers of the second group 
might be more desirable and more inspiring. Their great 
intellectual gifts, their keenness and sweeping energy 
of mind undoubtedly acted as a driving force and an 
inspiration to some of the students. But because of the 
coldness of their natures, their great abstruseness of 
intellection and impatience with students lacking marked 
ability, they influenced only the more brilliant students. 
The great majority of the students were wounded by the 
impatience and lack of sympathy, or were confused, mys- 
tified and struck dumb by the too dazzling brilliance of 
these personalities. It is due to the fact that their range 
of influence was narrow, that these men were placed 
in this group of teachers second in the degree of teach- 
ing ability. If only the intensity of their influence were 
considered, they would easily rank with those of the 






TEN GRADES OF TEACHING ABILITY 113 

highest type. (For example see Personalities No. 26, 27 
and 32.) 

Type 3—16 Teachers 

The sixteen men grouped as representing the third 
type of teacher were all, with but possibly two excep- 
tions, between thirty and fifty years of age. The varia- 
tions in power of the men within this group, for naturally 
they were not on the same level, were without exception 
in direct proportion to their ages. These sixteen men 
appeared to possess those qualities of buoyancy, of sup- 
pleness and something of that eternal adolescence which 
promises a further increase and maturity of their powers. 
It was only from this group that teachers of the first 
type could be recruited. One of the men of forceful per- 
sonality, great ability and tenacious grasp of his subject, 
just fell short of achieving the highest distinction because 
of faulty technique of teaching, and lack of wit, charm, 
and most serious of all, enthusiasm, that most kinetic of 
all qualities of personality. The distinctive character- 
istics of this group of teachers as a whole were their 
power to arouse enthusiasm among the students due to 
magnetic personalities, their intellectual power insuring 
a mastery of their subjects, and the promise of further 
development. (For examples see Personalities Nos. 5, 
25 ,28 and 29.) 

Type 4 — 5 Teachers 

Five men were included in the fourth group. All were 
men with more than average ability, but the results of 
their efforts were discounted by the influence of correct- 
ible imperfections of character and personality. In all but 
one of these men there was a lack of freshness, a dearth of 
exhilaration in personality and a lackadaisical and dawd- 
ling attitude towards their work and students. The at- 
mosphere of their classes was muggy and sluggish, per- 
meated as they were by the teachers' vanity and conceit. 
An expression of contemptuous arrogance was stamped 



114 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

on their faces. In addition to this common denominator 
of undesirable traits, each personality had a distinct flav- 
or of its own. One man was a blustering domineering 
fellow, whose arrogance was tempered by a certain good 
humor. The second was even more blustering and dicta- 
torial, and lacked the saving grace of good humor, he 
was crotchety and irascible. The third was especially 
abrupt, rude, cynical and haphazard. The fifth was a 
buffoon and a trifler who bullied his students, wasted 
their time and sneered at them disdainfully under the 
cover of good humor. 

Type 5 — 16 Teachers 

This group of sixteen teachers includes both young 
and old men, men who had been teaching possibly only 
four or five years, and men who had been teaching fif- 
teen or thirty years. They appeared to possess neither 
unusual abilities nor striking faults. Their main char- 
acteristic was their mediocrity. 

What sharply distinguished the men of this group 
from those of the third group was that they gave no def- 
inite promise of development. They all appeared, 
whether young or old, to have reached their full maturity 
and their future existence seemed to promise at best 
nothing but a continued preservation of their present 
state. Their work was marred by poor technique, by 
objectionable traits of personality, and by a poor grasp of 
the subject. They were still journeymen at their craft 
and one gained the impression that although they might 
improve somewhat, they would never become master 
craftsmen, — unless some force outside themselves should 
provoke self analysis and effort to improve. 

Interest was fairly well sustained in their classes and 
they appeared to be getting a fair percentage of results, 
but by no means as much as they should. In some cases, 
an improvement in the technique or a change in attitude 
toward the class would have made a great deal of dif- 
ference, would have added considerable interest to the 
class work, and increased its value immensely. 



TEN GRADES OF TEACHING ABILITY 115 

Very noticeable was the utter lack of humor and wit 
among the men. Only four of these men showed any 
gleam of humor. In one class, however, wit had degen- 
erated to banter and time was wasted that should have 
been devoted to the essential interests of the class. The 
rest of the men lacked congeniality or had not cultivated 
that solvent of constraint, humor, which is the "Open 
Sesame" to all men's hearts. The pall of dullness which 
settled down upon their classes could have been dis- 
pelled like a fog before the sun by a touch of humor. 
Truly in these classes, the great god Pan was dead! 
(For examples see Personalities Nos. 9, 14 and 21.) 

Type 6 — 9 Teachers 

Most egos, like the thyroid glands, undergo an enlarge- 
ment during the period of adolescence, but with the 
advent of maturity decrease to proper proportions. In 
some cases this diminution does not take place and we 
can see examples of men suffering from a permanent 
hypertrophy of the ego. These are the men who become 
insufferable egotists, who are so wrapped up in self- 
worship that they do not develop .sympathy for and in- 
terest in others. Such men lack generosity, good humor, 
tact, enthusiasm, charm and other emotional qualities 
which are necessary to make human association pleasing 
and stimulating. 

This sixth group of nine men were elderly men, all 
afflicted with this distorted and inflated sense of their 
own importance. Five of them appeared to have passed 
the half century mark and the remaining four were well 
past forty years. There was something distinctly ex- 
asperating about coming into contact with this type. 
Here were mature men, of tall commanding stature, of 
dignified and impressive bearing, from whom we should 
fairly expect a corresponding distinctiveness and vigor 
of mental power. They had only to speak to dispel the 
illusion and to reveal their negative personalities. Their 
egotism, dullness, coldness, tediousness and general in- 
adequacies as teachers at once became apparent. (For 



116 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

examples see Personalities Nos. 2 and 3.) 

Type 7 — 7 Teachers 

The seven men included in this group were young, 
immature instructors who had taught less than five years 
and who apparently had served their apprenticeship with- 
out thought of personality, culture or teaching technique. 
All of these were ranked as instructors except one. All 
but two of them seemed sincere, earnest and conscien- 
tious. Not one seemed to have those gifts of intellect 
or qualities of personality that promised development in- 
to the highest type of teacher. Only the two exceptions, 
who were extremely flippant, seemed to possess the qual- 
ity of humor. 

The salient feature of their class was the lack of 
contact between the teacher and the class, so marked that 
one actually sensed a barrier between them. The stu- 
dents had little conception of what the teacher was driv- 
ing at — the latter seemed to have little enough himself — 
and the teacher appeared to have not the slightest idea of 
what existed in the minds of the students that he could 
appeal to and use as a basis for arousing their interest. 
In all cases it was due partly to the precarious hold that 
the men had on their subject matter, and partly to their 
failure to cultivate the acquaintance of their classes and 
to invite responses from the students on any matter that 
was really close to their hearts. None of the teachers 
were dull, all were keen and fairly alert to everything but 
their need for self analysis, but they lacked perspective 
and vision, and were still engaged in the struggle of mas- 
tering their subject matter. Should not some older, more 
experienced teacher have taken them in hand and guided 
their uncertain footsteps? (For examples see Personal- 
ities Nos. 14, 15, 17 and 19.) 

Type 8—5 Teachers 

This eighth group of five men was composed of five 
comparatively young teachers, although somewhat older 



TEN GRADES OF TEACHING ABILITY 117 

than those of group 7. Their personalities were cold and 
clammy. They were matter-of-fact, lacking in imagina- 
tion. Their intellectual processes were dull and viscous. 
Their subject matter eluded them, they could barely re- 
call some ideas, and had very little power of organization. 
They showed no sense of humor, no enthusiasm, and no 
power of arousing interest. They were wooden, trite, 
and supremely tedious. They were men approaching 
the prime of life, and what should have been a period of 
generous fecundity and activity was a period of stagna- 
tion and sterility. (For examples see Personalities Nos. 
\Z and 18.) 



Type 9 — 3 Teachers 

It seems sacrilegious to criticize and disparage the ef- 
forts of old age, but the folly of those who should be 
wise is as reprehensible as the wantonness of youth. In 
this group were three men whose days had been number- 
ed, who should have retired gracefully to slippered ease 
and ruddy firesides, but who clung tenaciously to their 
posts and cluttered up the places that should have been 
filled by young stalwart stock. We should not complain 
if their only disability were old age, for some men do 
not ripen fully until white hair and wrinkles arrive to 
bear false testimony against the mellow, lambent spirit 
within. I recall an old Greek professor, old in years 
and with all the superficial trappings of old age, but who 
was sound as a young oak, and whose mind had a fire, a 
flexibility, and audacity that was the envy of many of 
his associates in their prime. What I do complain of is 
that these men were senile and decrepit. 



Type 10 — 3 Teachers 

Three step-children of Fate comprise this last and most 
ineffectual group of teachers. Their futility was some- 
thing to marvel at, their crass stupidity something to be- 



118 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

wilder the imagination. All three possessed a mental 
awkwardness and a spiritual ungainliness. They were 
afflicted with a kind of mental astigmatism ; thoughts and 
ideas could not be focussed sharply, but were projected 
confused and distorted. It produced a mental dizziness, 
a blurring like a moving picture film reeled off too fast. 
The effect upon the students can be readily imagined. 
They were thrown into a benumbed bewilderment, which 
rendered them totally unable to derive any benefit from 
the class exercise. In these three teachers, physical de- 
fects had been combined with mental inadequacies. One 
man was short, rotund and pudgy-faced. Another was 
tall and awkward, a geometrical frenzy. The third was 
deserving of sympathy, lame and haggard-faced, and ap- 
peared to be suffering from some nervous disorder that 
prevented any physical repose or poise. 

The present number of types could possibly have 
been somewhat extended or slightly reduced. The exact 
number of types is not of paramount importance. What 
is of supreme importance is that the study reveals an 
astonishing and preventable variation in teaching abil- 
ity, a difference of ability that the ratio of 100% to 10% 
— the lowest — does not adequately represent. A ratio of 
100% to 0% would be more nearly correct; it was the 
difference between a teaching ability of the highest or- 
der and a teaching ability that was worse than futile. 
From merely a process of deductive reasoning, it is easy 
enough to conclude that between these two planes of 
ability must exist different grades of power, which might 
be clearly defined and sharply differentiated. 

It is hoped that this attempt to distinguish these var- 
ious grades of teaching ability among one group of 
seventy-two teachers, may stimulate teachers towards 
self analysis of their own teaching ability, and that it 
may encourage college authorities to analyze more keen- 
ly and to consider more comprehensively the subject of 
teaching personality and ability. Discussion of a ten- 
tative plan may break the ground for a more refined and 
comprehensive scheme of classifying the teaching ability 
of higher education's pilots. 



CHAPTER XI 
NEXT STEPS IN PERSONALITYCULTURE 

From the preceding pages the reader has seen that no 
plea is intended for the exaltation of one single type of 
personality over others as the only kind suitable for 
successful teaching. On the contrary, the personality 
portraits show that different types of personality which 
combine various qualities in varying degrees make for 
success in teaching. For example, in Chapter IV eight 
teachers were described who represented different types 
of personality, and yet all were excellent in their own way. 
Some of them were men of great physical and abounding 
vitality, while others were men of lesser physical energy. 
Some men were enthusiastic, aggressive and forceful, 
and others were quiet and unassuming. In fact, different 
types of personalities with qualities that were antitheti- 
cal achieved success in teaching. 

If the reader will consider the list of desirable quali- 
ties given in the various tables he will discover very 
few which can be dispensed with without detracting ap- 
preciably from the effectiveness of teaching ability. A pe- 
rusal of the list of objectionable qualities will also discover 
that there exist definite faults of personality which can- 
not safely be harbored and which must be avoided in 
order to prevent handicapping one's teaching ability. 

Certain qualities which are desirable when present in a 
moderate degree, become objectionable when present in 
an exaggerated degree. For example, Personality No. 6 
was a man of great vitality, gifted with marked powers 
of expression. However, this gift proved his undoing, 
for his volume of talk swamped his students, who could 
not possibly retain and assimilate material poured to- 



120 PBRSONALITYCULTURE 

wards them at such a stupendous rate. In fact, not a 
few faults of personality were merely exaggerations of 
good traits. Thus an excess of dignity became coldness ; 
good nature degenerated into banter, flippancy, and lax- 
ity ; generalization into abstractness ; individuality into 
eccentricity ; taste in dress into foppishness ; openminded- 
ness into subservience, and so on. Personalityculture 
would trim the excess and develop the main stalk. 

A number of the teachers fell short of excellence in 
teaching ability because of the presence of only one or 
two objectionable traits of personality. For example, 
Personality No. 5 who lectured on the "Theory of Evolu- 
tion" was somewhat too ironical. Personality No. 3 
who lectured on the Renaissance was too lackadaisical. 
Personality No. 9 who taught French, and No. 15 who 
lectured on the vocal organs, were too flippant. Others 
were too cold and formal, too abstract, were affected, 
eccentric, slovenly, indolent, or inert. If this one par- 
ticular fault were eradicated, as would easily be possible, 
their work would become immediately much more ef- 
fective. 

Although, to be sure, it is very difficult for a person to 
materially alter traits of personality, nevertheless, chang- 
es are occurring in everyone to a certain extent, in some 
consciously, perhaps in the majority unconsciously. With- 
in certain limits everyone's personality is modifiable. 
Once teachers are led to realize keenly and comprehen- 
sively what traits in personality count in teaching and 
which do not count, the road to improvement will have 
been at least commenced. 

It is due, possibly, to the enormous complexity of 
human personality that so little effort has been made to 
analyze, classify, and expound a system of character- 
ology or science of personality. Psychology and social 
psychology have broken the preliminary ground, but 
systematic, practical psychology is yet in its formative 
stage. Pedagogy must wait for science to solve some of 
the great questions of psychic life. Pschiatry and psycho- 
analysis have commenced the solution of certain path- 
ological mental conditions. The followers of Binet and 



NEXT STEPS IN PERSONALITYCULTURE 121 

Simon are struggling with the problem of measuring in- 
telligence. Numerous investigators are wrestling with 
the problem of analyzing and classifying the phenomena 
of psychic activity, normal, subnormal and abnormal. 
They are encountering enormous difficulties in explor- 
ing this most imponderable and complex phenomenon in 
the world. 

Nevertheless, although we may yet have vast fields to 
explore and study, great advances and contributions 
have been made in the field of psychology and the study 
of personality. Enough material is available so that 
courses in practical and individual personality could eas- 
ily be given to teachers and could be required of students 
as well. Furthermore, teachers and students should be 
encouraged to observe personality, to study themselves 
and others. Pathological traits and tendencies, excres- 
cences, vicious and anti-social habits and qualities among 
students should be recognized and guarded against, and 
desirable and constructive ones encouraged. Constantly 
there should be held up to the attention of both teacher 
and student an adequate, illuminating and inspiring con- 
ception of personality and the idea that personality is 
modifiable. The proper development of personality 
should be one great aim of both teacher and student alike, 
and of college management as well. 

The work in a college should provide for the progres- 
sive training of other qualities of a student's personality 
than that of memory. If college authorities would plan 
and arrange the work and methods of the courses in the 
various college years in such a manner that habits of 
application can be progressively developed, together 
with qualities like reasoning power, concentration, pa- 
tience, resoluteness, clearness, precision, forcefulness, ra- 
pidity of accomplishment, organization, originality, pow- 
ers of oral and written expression, persuasion, argument, 
discussion, etc., the students would emerge from the 
college walls much better prepared to take their places 
in life. 

Questionnaires to suit the needs of both teacher and 
student might be formulated by the proper authorities 



122 PBRSONALITYCULTURE 



For Questions or Notes by Readers 



NEXT STEPS IN PERSONALITYCULTURE 123 

and distributed for self analysis and criticism. See the 
card on page 80. 

A personality card might be kept by both teacher and 
student when in college to keep sharply in mind their 
own problems and to register their personality develop- 
ment. Several such for students are now in use. (See 
Record Aids in College Management.) If they analyzed 
student personality in this way the teachers would be 
awakened to the real problems of teaching, would take 
more interest in and would be able to give expert and 
comprehensive attention to the educational needs of their 
students. 

Of all the problems competing for the attention of the 
college authorities none transcends in importance that 
of teaching efficiency. All else is impedimenta. Each col- 
lege should organize a committee to study teaching per- 
sonality and efficiency and give it power to study, analyze 
and formulate recommendations for improvement. Such 
a committee could collect information about teaching per- 
sonality, methods and classroom procedure from all 
sources, could visit classes in its own institution or in 
others, observing, recording and analyzing. Then the 
authorities and faculty on the basis of the knowledge and 
recommendation, could formulate minimum standards of 
teaching personality and methods. The various depart- 
ments of the faculty could also be engaged in studying 
their own pedagogical problems. Departmental heads 
might be entrusted with the task of determining by per- 
sonal visitation and other means the instructional efficien- 
cy of their individual teachers. Then means should be tak- 
en to correct the weaknesses of inept or indifferent teach- 
ers. 

Having done their best to strengthen personality and 
improve teaching technique colleges will not often need to 
employ the supreme penalty, dismissal. 

A committee on teaching efficiency might formulate 
the standards of teaching ability for guiding college 
authorities in the choice of new instructors and addition- 
al members. 

Must then universities sacrifice research ability for 



124 PERSONALITYCULTURB 

personality? Is there no room on faculties for great re- 
search ability unless accompanied by teaching ability? 
These are two of the most fundamental questions which 
American universities are trying to settle. Leaders like 
Presidents Hadley of Yale and Butler of Columbia have 
declared in annual reports that ability in research does 
not always carry with it ability to teach. The Carnegie 
Foundation says that much research in universities is 
only imitation research. One of two lessons follows clear- 
ly from a consideraton of instructor personality in its 
relation to teaching: 

1 — Where a great researcher has neither desire nor 
ability to teach others, either through lecturing to them 
or questioning them in class, or by directing their re- 
search, he should neither be compelled nor permitted to 
teach, and universities should frankly finance his re- 
search without camouflaging it by calling it teaching. 

2 — A way out which would cost our higher ed- 
ucation few great leaders in research would be to limit 
their so-called instruction to the direction of research 
by their students. Seldom is a personality engrossed in 
competent research a weak personality in the eyes of 
those who are his collaborators and colleagues on the 
threshold of research in his field. 

What personalityculture requires is not a decrease in 
research work, but a clean-cut differentiation between the 
aims and methods of research and those of teaching 
in order that both may gain in amount and effectiveness. 
That the proper material is not now being obtained 
for either research work or college teaching is being 
widely insisted by leading educators. For example, at 
the recent national conference in connection with the in- 
auguration of Marion L. Burton as president of the 
University of Michigan, Dean Frederick Woodbridge of 
Columbia University's graduate school declared: 
With few exceptions the graduate student is 
poor material. He is alert, he has industry, 
and he has an aim to succeed. Morally he is 
good material, but intellectually he is poor. He 
comes to us with credits for entrance. Instead 



NEXT STEPS IN PERSONALITYCULTURE 125 



For Questions or Notes by Readers 



126 PERSONALITYCULTURE 

we should substitute examinations so constructed 

that only a scholar can pass them 

Another thing, graduate students should never 
be taught. If they can't teach themselves, they 
should perish. My moral is: If we want to in- 
crease the supply of adequately prepared 
teachers, we must make the graduate school a 
place of learning [and of personality!] 
When we remember that it is from the graduate school 
that our colleges and universities are recruiting their fac- 
ulties and that in the next decade more college teachers 
should be recruited than exist today, national interests 
make it imperative that the calibre of teaching personal- 
ity be improved at its source. Weak personalities and 
inferior intellects may not safely be encouraged or per- 
mitted to flood the college markets. 

While doing its utmost to improve the intake and the 
output of graduate schools, higher education will doubt- 
less search for able instructors among successful teachers 
and strong personalities in secondary schools and public 
school systems. 

For the same reason teaching power will be sought 
among successful men and women in industry and com- 
merce where both personality and teaching efficiency 
are essential to leadership. 

Finally higher education will cultivate personality 
among faculty and students alike by using what one 
distinguished developer of man power, John R. Commons, 
calls the "dig it up" method of instructing or training. 
"Yellow streaks," personality weaknesses and teaching 
deficiencies quickly advertise themselves when confront- 
ed by world loads that need to be carried. 

Such statements as those of Dean Woodbridge are pre- 
monitory signs of a new spirit in education which has its 
origin in the intense desire to see things as they are, and 
expresses itself through the channels of self criticism of 
purposes, goods, methods and results in education. Self 
surveys, investigations by outsiders, the linking up of 
colleges with the work of industries and business, the de- 
velopment of vocational education, the pruning away of 



NEXT STEPS IN PERSONALITYCULTURE 127 

the obsolete and useless from courses of study, — all are 
signs of healthy growth in education. The fact that sev- 
eral colleges have already started the work of analyzing 
and studying student personality is an added proof that 
colleges are in unison with the spirit of the times. From 
the now common mental tests of students it is but a short 
step to personality tests of instructors as well as students. 

American industries, after a long and intense absorp- 
tion in mechanical efficiency and improvement and in 
the salvaging and complete utilization of materials, are at 
best recognizing that the human factor is mote than a 
combination of brain and muscle, that it is an organic 
union of mind, heart and spirit which must be peculiarly 
handled, if the whole human entity is to be aroused into 
activity and power. The efficient use and development 
of the human resources, which are worth many times the 
whole earth's material resources, are more and more com- 
ing to be the main concern of business and industry. 

A similar conversion is necessary in the field of educa- 
tion. Education must realize that students are more than 
granaries to be filled with facts and ideas; that they are 
in addition, great, living dynamos of feeling and aspira- 
tions ; that they are wonderful potential creative spirits ; 
and that all the knowledge they absorb is but food and 
stimulation for developing human souls. They must 
realize that the impact of living soul on other living 
souls, the contact of spirit on spirit is the most effective 
medium of real education known, and the main excuse 
for formal education as now organized. And the blind 
cannot lead the blind. To obtain the greatest and most 
effective results in education, we must stimulate, train 
and develop the personality of our existing teachers and 
seek to attract and add to our present supply of person- 
ality resources. 

The End 



